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THE  LIBRARY  OF  THE 
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NORTH  CAROLINA 
AT  CHAPEL  HILL 


ENDOWED  BY  THE 
DIALECTIC  AND  PHILANTHROPIC 
SOCIETIES 


PS2318 
.A  1 
1883 


UNIVERSITY  OF  N.C.  AT  CHAPEL  HILL 


00008740286 


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WORKS  OF  JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 


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IRESIDE 


BY 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 


"  Travelling  makes  a  man  sit  still  in  his  old  age  with  satisfaction) 
and  travel  over  the  world  again  in  his  chair  and  bed  by  discourse 
mnd  thoughts." 

The  Voyage  of  Italy,  by  Richard  Lassels,  Gent 


SEVENTH  EDITION. 


J  ¥>0 


}7, 


BOSTON: 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY. 

1883. 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1864,  by 
JAMES   RUSSELL  LOWELL, 
fes  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  District  of  Massachusetts* 


ireside  Travels, 


HE  greater  part  of  this  volume  was 


X  printed  ten  years  ago  in  "  Putnam's 
Monthly "  and  "Graham's  Magazine."  The 
additions  (most  of  them  about  Italy)  have 
been  made  up,  as  the  original  matter  was, 
from  old  letters  and  journals  written  on  the 
spot.  My  wish  was  to  describe  not  so  much 
what  I  went  to  see,  as  what  I  saw  that  was 
most  unlike  what  one  sees  at  home.  If  the 
reader  find  entertainment,  he  will  find  all 
I  hoped  to  give  him. 


To 

w.  w.  s. 


Who  carves  his  thought  in  marble  will  not  scoi® 
These  pictured  bubbles,  if  so  far  they  fly  ; 
They  will  recall  days  ruddy  but  with  mom, 
Not  red  like  these  late  past  or  drawing  nigh  ? 


CO  N  T  E  NTS. 


Pact 

Cambridge  Thirty  Years  Ago  ....  3 

A  Moosehead  Journal  89 

Leaves  from  my  Journal  in  Italy  and  elsewhere. 
At  Sea  .      .      .      .      ,      .      .  .155 
In  the  Mediterranean    .      .      .      .  175 

Italy     .      .  187 

A  Few  Bits  of  Roman  Mosaic      .      .  281 


CAMBRIDGE  THIRTY  YEARS  AGO, 


A  MEMOIR  ADDRESSED  TO  THE  EDELMANN  STORG 
IN  ROME. 

IN  those  quiet  old  winter  evenings,  around 
our  Roman  fireside,  it  was  not  seldom,  my 
dear  Storg,  that  we  talked  of  the  advantages 
of  travel,  and  in  speeches  not  so  long  that  our 
cigars  would  forget  their  fire  (the  measure  of 
just  conversation)  debated  the  comparative 
advantages  of  the  Old  and  New  Worlds. 
You  will  remember  how  serenely  I  bore  the 
imputation  of  provincialism,  while  I  asserted 
that  those  advantages  were  reciprocal ;  that 
an  orbed  and  balanced  life  would  revolve  be- 
tween the  Old  and  the  New  as  opposite,  but 
not  antagonistic  poles,  the  true  equator  lying 
somewhere  midway  between  them.  I  asserted 
also,  that  there  were  two  epochs  at  which  a 


4 


CAMBRIDGE 


man  might  travel,  —  before  twenty,  for  pure 
enjoyment,  and  after  thirty,  for  instruction. 
At  twenty,  the  eye  is  sufficiently  delighted 
with  merely  seeing;  new  things  are  pleasant 
only  because  they  are  not  old ;  and  we  take 
everything  heartily  and  naturally  in  the  right 
way,  —  for  even  mishaps  are  like  knives, 
that  either  serve  us  or  cut  us,  as  we  grasp 
them  by  the  blade  or  the  handle.  After  thir- 
ty, we  carry  along  our  scales,  wTith  lawful 
weights  stamped  by  experience,  and  our 
chemical  tests  acquired  by  study,  with  which 
to  ponder  and  assay  all  arts,  institutions,  and 
manners,  and  to  ascertain  either  their  absolute 
worth  or  their  merely  relative  value  to  our- 
selves. On  the  whole,  I  declared  myself  in 
favor  of  the  after  thirty  method,  —  was  it  part- 
ly (so  difficult  is  it  to  distinguish  between 
opinions  and  personalities)  because  I  had  tried 
it  myself,  though  with  scales  so  imperfect  and 
tests  so  inadequate  ?  Perhaps  so,  but  more  be- 
cause I  held  that  a  man  should  have  travelled 
thoroughly  round  himself  and  the  great  terra 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO. 


5 


incognita  just  outside  and  inside  his  own  thresh- 
old, before  he  undertook  voyages  of  discovery 
to  other  worlds.  "  Far  countries  he  can  safest 
visit  who  himself  is  doughty,"  says  Beowulf. 
Let  him  first  thoroughly  explore  that  strange 
country  laid  down  on  the  maps  as  Seau- 
TON  ;  let  him  look  down  into  its  craters, 
and  find  whether  they  be  burnt-out  or  only 
smouldering ;  let  him  know  between  the  good 
and  evil  fruits  of  its  passionate  tropics  ;  let 
him  experience  how  healthful  are  its  serene 
and  high-lying  table-lands ;  let  him  be  many 
times  driven  back  (till  he  wisely  consent 
to  be  baffled)  from  its  speculative  northwest 
passages  that  lead  mostly  to  the  dreary  soli- 
tudes of  a  sunless  world,  before  he  think  him- 
self morally  equipped  for  travels  to  more 
distant  regions.  But  does  he  commonly  even 
so  much  as  think  of  this,  or,  while  buying 
amplest  trunks  for  his  corporeal  apparel,  does 
it  once  occur  to  him  how  very  small  a  port- 
manteau will  contain  all  his  milttal  and  spirit- 
ual outfit  ?    It  is  more  often  true  that  a  man 


6 


CAMBRIDGE 


who  could  scarce  be  induced  to  expose  his 
unclothed  body  even  to  a  village  of  prairie- 
dogs,  will  complacently  display  a  mind  as 
naked  as  the  day  it  was  born,  without  so 
much  as  a  fig-leaf  of  acquirement  on  it,  in 
every  gallery  of  Europe,  — 

"  Not  caring,  so  that  sumpter-horse,  the  back, 
Be  hung  with  gaudy  trappings,  in  what  coarse, 
Yea,  rags  most  beggarly,  they  clothe  the  soul." 

If  not  with  a  robe  dyed  in  the  Tyrian  purple 
of  imaginative  culture,  if  not  with  the  close- 
fitting,  work-day  dress  of  social  or  business 
training,  —  at  least,  my  dear  Storg,  one  might 
provide  himself  with  the  merest  waist- clout 
of  modesty ! 

But  if  it  be  too  much  to  expect  men  to 
traverse  and  survey  themselves  before  they 
go  abroad,  we  might  certainly  ask  that  they 
should  be  familiar  with  their  own  villages.  If 
not  even  that,  then  it  is  of  little  import  whith- 
er they  go ;  and  let  us  hope  that,  by  seeing 
how  calmly  j£ir  own  narrow  neighborhood 
bears  their  departure,  they  may  be  led  to  think 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO. 


7 


that  the  circles  of  disturbance  set  in  motion 
by  the  fall  of  their  tiny  drop  into  the  ocean  of 
eternity,  will  not  have  a  radius  of  more  than  a 
week  in  any  direction  ;  and  that  the  world  can 
endure  the  subtraction  of  even  a  justice  of 
the  peace  with  provoking  equanimity.  In  this 
way,  at  least,  foreign  travel  may  do  them  good, 
—  may  make  them,  if  not  wiser,  at  any  rate 
less  fussy.  Is  it  a  great  way  to  go  to  school, 
and  a  great  fee  to  pay  for  the  lesson  ?  We 
cannot  give  too  much  for  the  genial  stoicism 
which,  when  life  flouts  us,  and  says,  Put  that 
in  your  pipe  and  smoke  it !  can  puff  away  with 
as  sincere  a  relish  as  if  it  were  tobacco  of 
Mount  Lebanon  in  a  narghileh  of  Damascus. 

After  all,  my  dear  Storg,  it  is  to  know 
things  that  one  has  need  to  travel,  and  not 
men.  Those  force  us  to  come  to  them,  but 
these  come  to  us,  —  sometimes  whether  we 
will  or  no.  These  exist  for  us  in  every  va- 
riety in  our  own  town.  You  may  find  your 
antipodes  without  a  voyage  to  Aina  ;  he  lives 
there,  just  round  the  next  corner,  precise,  for 


8 


CAMBRIDGE 


tnal,  the  slave  of  precedent,  making  all  his 
'teacups  with  a  break  in  the  edge,  because  his 
model  had  one,  and  your  fancy  decorates  him 
with  an  endlessness  of  airy  pigtail.  There, 
too,  are  John  Bull,  Jean  Crapaud,  Hans 
Sauerkraut,  Pat  Murphy,  and  the  rest. 
It  has  been  well  said : 

"  He  needs  no  ship  to  cross  the  tide, 
Who,  in  the  lives  around  him,  sees 
Fair  window-prospects  opening  wide 
O'er  history's  fields  on  every  side, 
Kome,  Egypt,  England,  Ind,  and  Greece. 

"  Whatever  moulds  of  various  brain 
E'er  shaped  the  world  to  weal  or  woe, 
Whatever  empires'  wax  and  wane, 
To  him  who  hath  not  eyes  in  vain, 
His  village-microcosm  can  show." 

But  things  are  good  for  nothing  out  of  their 
natural  habitat.  If  the  heroic  Barnum  had 
succeeded  in  transplanting  Shakespeare's  house 
to  America,  what  interest  would  it  have  had 
for  us,  torn  out  of  its  appropriate  setting  in 
softly-hilled  Warwickshire,  which  showed  us 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO. 


9 


that  the  most  English  of  poets  must  be  born 
in  the  most  English  of  counties  ?  I  mean  by 
a  Thing  that  which  is  not  a  mere  spectacle, 
that  which  some  virtue  of  the  mind  leaps 
forth  to,  as  it  also  sends  forth  its  sympathetic 
flash  to  the  mind,  as  soon  as  they  come  within 
each  other's  sphere  of  attraction,  and,  with 
instantaneous  coalition,  form  a  new  product, 
—  knowledge. 

Such,  in  the  understanding  it  gives  us  of 
early  Roman  history,  is  the  little  territory 
around  Rome,  the  gentis  cunahula,  without 
a  sight  of  which  Livy  and  Niebuhr  and  the 
maps  are  vain.  So,  too,  one  must  go  to 
Pompeii  and  the  Museo  Borbonico,  to  get  a 
true  conception  of  that  wondrous  artistic  na- 
ture of  the  Greeks,  strong  enough,  even  in 
that  petty  colony,  to  survive  foreign  conquest 
and  to  assimilate  barbarian  blood,  showing  a 
grace  and  fertility  of  invention  whose  Roman 
copies  Rafaello  himself  could  only  copy,  and 
enchanting  even  the  base  utensils  of  the 
kitchen  with  an  inevitable  sense  of  beauty 
l  * 


10 


CAMBRIDGE 


to  which  we  subterranean  Northmen  have 
not  yet  so  much  as  dreamed  of  climbing. 
Mere  sights  one  can  see  quite  as  well  at 
home.  Mont  Blanc  does  not  tower  more 
grandly  in  the  memory  than  did  the  dream- 
peak  which  loomed  afar  on  the  morning 
horizon  of  hope,  nor  did  the  smoke-palm  of 
Vesuvius  stand  more  erect  and  fair,  with 
tapering  stem  and  spreading  top,  in  that  Par- 
thenopean  air,  than  under  the  diviner  sky 
of  imagination.  I  know  what  Shakespeare 
says  about  homekeeping  youths,  and  I  can 
fancy  what  you  will  add  about  America  being 
interesting  only  as  a  phenomenon,  and  un- 
comfortable to  live  in,  because  we  have  not 
yet  done  with  getting  ready  to  live.  But  is 
not  your  Europe,  on  the  other  hand,  a  place 
where  men  have  done  living  for  the  present, 
and  of  value  chiefly  because  of  the  men  who 
had  done  living  in  it  long  ago  ?  And  if,  in 
our  rapidly-moving  country,  one  feel  some- 
times as  if  he  had  his  home  on  a  railroad 
train,  is  there  not  also  a  satisfaction  in  know- 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO. 


11 


ing  that  one  is  gfiing  somewhere  ?  To  what 
end  visit  Europe,  if  people  carry  with  them,  as 
most  do,  their  old  parochial  horizon,  going 
hardly  as  Americans  even,  much  less  as  men  ? 
Have  we  not  both  seen  persons  abroad  who 
put  us  in  mind  of  parlor  gold-fish  in  their 
vase,  isolated  in  that  little  globe  of  their  own 
element,  incapable  of  communication  with  the 
strange  world  around  them,  a  show  them- 
selves, while  it  was  always  doubtful  if  they 
could  see  at  all  beyond  the  limits  of  their 
portable  prison  ?  The  wise  man  travels  to 
discover  himself ;  it  is  to  find  himself  out 
that  he  goes  out  of  himself  and  his  habitual 
associations,  trying  everything  in  turn  till  he 
find  that  one  activity,  that  royal  standard, 
sovran  over  him  by  divine  right,  toward 
which  all  the  disbanded  powers  of  his  nature 
and  the  irregular  tendencies  of  his  life  gather 
joyfully,  as  to  the  common  rallying-point  of 
their  loyalty. 

All  these  things  we  debated  while  the  ilex 
logs  upon  the  hearth  burned  down  to  tinkling 


12  CAMBRIDGE 

coals,  over  which  a  gray,  soft  moss  of  ashes 
grew  betimes,  mocking  the  poor  wood  with  a 
pale  travesty  of  that  green  and  gradual  decay 
on  forest-floors,  its  natural  end.  Already  the 
clock  at  the  Cappuccini  told  the  morning  quar- 
ters, and  on  the  pauses  of  our  talk  no  sound 
intervened  but  the  muffled  hoot  of  an  owl  in 
the  near  convent-garden,  or  the  rattling  tramp 
of  a  patrol  of  that  French  army  which  keeps 
him  a  prisoner  in  his  own  city  who  claims  to 
lock  and  unlock  the  doors  of  heaven.  But 
still  the  discourse  would  eddy  round  one  ob- 
stinate rocky  tenet  of  mine,  for  I  maintained, 
you  remember,  that  the  wisest  man  was  he 
who  stayed  at  home ;  that  to  see  the  antiqui- 
ties of  the  Old  World  was  nothing,  since  the 
youth  of  the  world  was  really  no  farther  away 
from  us  than  our  own  youth  ;  and  that,  more- 
over, we  had  also  in  America  things  amazingly 
old,  as  our  boys,  for  example.  Add,  that  in 
the  end  this  antiquity  is  a  matter  of  compari- 
son, which  skips  from  place  to  place  as  nimbly 
as  Emerson's  Sphinx,  and  that  one  old  thing 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO.  13 


is  good  only  till  we  have  seen  an  older.  Eng- 
land is  ancient  till  we  go  to  Rome ;  Etruria 
dethrones  Rome,  but  only  to  pass  this  sceptre 
of  antiquity  which  so  lords  it  over  our  fancies' 
to  the  Pelasgi,  from  whom  Egypt  straightway 
wrenches  it,  to  give  it  up  in  turn  to  older  India. 
And  whither  then  ?  As  well  rest  upon  the 
first  step,  since  the  effect  of  what  is  old  upon 
the  mind  is  single  and  positive,  not  cumulative. 
As  soon  as  a  thing  is  past,  it  is  as  infinitely 
far  away  from  us  as  if  it  had  happened  mil- 
lions of  years  ago.  And  if  the  learned  Huet 
be  correct,  who  reckoned  that  all  human 
thoughts  and  records  could  be  included  in  ten 
folios,  what  so  frightfully  old  as  we  ourselves, 
who  can,  if  we  choose,  hold  in  our  memories 
every  syllable  of  recorded  time,  from  the  first 
crunch  of  Eve's  teeth  in  the  apple  downward, 
being  thus  ideally  contemporary  with  hoariest 
Eld? 

"  The  pyramids  built  up  with  newer  might 
To  us  are  nothing  novel,  nothing  strange." 

Now,  Aiy  dear  Storg,  you  ,  know  my  (what 


14 


CAMBRIDGE 


the  phrenologists  call)  inhabitiveness  and  ad- 
hesiveness, —  how  I  stand  by  the  old  thought, 
the  old  thing,  the  old  place,  and  the  old  friend, 
till  I  am  very  sure  I  have  got  a  better,  and 
even  then  migrate  painfully.  Remember  the 
old  Arabian  story,  and  think  how  hard  it  is  to 
pick  up  all  the  pomegranate-seeds  of  an  oppo- 
nent's argument,  and  how,  as  long  as  one  re- 
mains, you  are  as  far  from  the  end  as  ever. 
Since  I  have  you  entirely  at  my  mercy,  (for 
you  cannot  answer  me  under  five  weeks,)  you 
will  not  be  surprised  at  the  advent  of  this  let- 
ter. I  had  always  one  impregnable  position, 
which  was,  that,  however  good  other  places 
might  be,  there  was  only  one  in  which  we 
could  be  born,  and  which  therefore  possessed 
a  quite  peculiar  and  inalienable  virtue.  We 
had  the  fortune,  which  neither  of  us  have  had 
reason  to  call  other  than  good,  to  journey  to- 
gether through  the  green,  secluded  valley  of 
boyhood  ;  together  we  climbed  the  mountain 
wall  which  shut  in,  and  looked  down  upon, 
those  Italian  plains  of  early  manhood ;  and, 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO. 


15 


since  then,  we  have  met  sometimes  by  a  well, 
or  broken  bread  together  at  an  oasis  in  the  arid 
desert  of  life,  as  it  truly  is.  With  this  letter  I 
propose  to  make  you  my  fellow-traveller  in  one 
of  those  fireside  voyages  which,  as  we  grow 
older,  we  make  oftener  and  oftener  through 
our  own  past.  Without  leaving  your  elbow- 
chair,  you  shall  go  back  with  me  thirty  years, 
which  will  bring  you  among  things  and  persons 
as  thoroughly  preterite  as  Romulus  or  Numa. 
For  so  rapid  are  our  changes  in  America  that 
the  transition  from  old  to  new,  the  shifting  from 
habits  and  associations  to  others  entirely  dif- 
ferent, is  as  rapid  almost  as  the  passing  in  of 
one  scene  and  the  drawing  out  of  another  on 
the  stage.  And  it  is  this  which  makes  Amer- 
ica so  interesting  to  the  philosophic  student 
of  history  and  man.  Here,  as  in  a  theatre, 
the  great  problems  of  anthropology — which  in 
the  Old  World  were  ages  in  solving,  but  which 
are  solved,  leaving  only  a  dry  net  result  —  are 
compressed,  as  it  were,  into  the  entertainment 
of  a  few  hours.    Here  we  have  I  know  not 


# 


16 


CAMBRIDGE 


how  many  epochs  of  history  and  phases  of  civ- 
ilization contemporary  with  each  other,  nay, 
within  five  minutes  of  each  other,  by  the  elec- 
tric telegraph.  In  two  centuries  we  have  seen 
rehearsed  the  dispersion  of  man  from  a  small 
point  over  a  whole  continent ;  we  witness  with 
our  own  eyes  the  action  of  those  forces  which 
govern  the  great  migration  of  the  peoples  now 
historical  in  Europe  ;  we  can  watch  the  action 
and  reaction  of  different  races,  forms  of  gov- 
ernment, and  higher  or  lower  civilizations. 
Over  there,  you  have  only  the  dead  precipi- 
tate, demanding  tedious  analysis  ;  but  here  the 
elements  are  all  in  solution,  and  we  have  only 
to  look  to  know  them  all.  History,  which 
every  day  makes  less  account  of  governors  and 
more  of  man,  must  find  here  the  compendious 
key  to  all  that  picture-writing  of  the  Past. 
Therefore  it  is,  my  dear  Storg,  that  we  Yan- 
kees may  still  esteem  our  America  a  place 
worth  living  in.  But  calm  your  apprehen- 
sions ;  I  do  not  propose  to  drag  you  with  me 
on  such  an  historical  circumnavigation  of  the 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO,  17 

globe,  but  only  to  show  you  that  (however 
needful  it  may  be  to  go  abroad  for  the  study 
of  esthetics)  a  man  who  uses  the  eyes  of  his 
heart  may  find  here  also  pretty  bits  of  what 
may  be  called  the  social  picturesque,  and  little 
landscapes  over  which  that  Indian-summer  at- 
mosphere of  the  Past  broods  as  sweetly  and 
tenderly  as  over  a  Roman  ruin.  Let  us  look 
at  the  Cambridge  of  thirty  years  since. 

The  seat  of  the  oldest  college  in  America, 
it  had,  of  course,  some  of  that  cloistered 
quiet  which  characterizes  all  university  towns. 
Even  now  delicately-thoughtful  A.  H.  C.  tells 
me  that  he  finds  in  its  intellectual  atmos- 
phere a  repose  which  recalls  that  of  grand  old 
Oxford.  But,  underlying  this,  it  had  an 
idiosyncrasy  of  its  own.  Boston  was  not  yet 
a  city,  and  Cambridge  was  still  a  country 
village,  with  its  own  habits  and  traditions,  not 
yet  feeling  too  strongly  the  force  of  suburban 
gravitation.  Approaching  it  from  the  west 
by  what  was  then  called  the  New  Road  (it  is 
called  so  no  longer,  for  we  change  our  names 

B 


18 


CAMBRIDGE 


whenever  we  can,  to  the  great  detriment  of  all 
historical  association),  you  would  pause  on  the 
brow  of  Symonds'  Hill  to  enjoy  a  view  singu- 
larly soothing  and  placid.  In  front  of  you 
lay  the  town,  tufted  with  elms,  lindens,  and 
horse-chestnuts,  which  had  seen  Massachusetts 
a  colony,  and  were  fortunately  unable  to  emi- 
grate with  the  Tories  by  whom,  or  by  whose 
fathers,  they  were  planted.  Over  it  rose  the 
noisy  belfry  of  the  College,  the  square,  brown 
tower  of  the  church,  and  the  slim,  yellow 
spire  of  the  parish  meeting-house,  by  no 
means  ungraceful,  and  then  an  invariable 
characteristic  of  New  England  religious  archi- 
tecture.  On  your  right,  the  Charles  slipped 
smoothly  through  green  and  purple  salt-mead- 
ows, darkened,  here  and  there,  with  the 
blossoming  black-grass  as  with  a  stranded 
cloud-shadow.  Over  these  marshes,  level  as 
water,  but  without  its  glare,  and  with  softer 
and  more  soothing  gradations  of  perspective, 
the  eye  was  carried  to  a  horizon  of  softly- 
rounded  hills.    To  your  left  hand,  upon  the 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO. 


19 


Old  Road,  you  saw  some  half-dozen  dignified 
old  houses  of  the  colonial  time,  all  comfortably 
fronting  southward.  If  it  were  early  June, 
the  rows  of  horse-chestnuts  along  the  fronts 
of  these  houses  showed,  through  every  crevice 
of  their  dark  heap  of  foliage,  and  on  the  end 
of  every  drooping  limb,  a  cone  of  pearly  flow- 
ers, while  the  hill  behind  was  white  or  rosy 
with  the  crowding  blooms  of  various  fruit- 
trees.  There  is  no  sound,  unless  a  horseman 
clatters  over  the  loose  planks  of  the  bridge, 
while  his  antipodal  shadow  glides  silently  over 
the  mirrored  bridge  below,  or  unless, 

"  O  winged  rapture,  feathered  soul  of  spring, 
Blithe  voice  of  woods,  fields,  waters,  all  in  one, 
Pipe  blown  through  by  the  warm,  mild  breath  of  June 
Shepherding  her  white  flocks  of  woolly  clouds, 
The  bobolink  has  come,  and  climbs  the  wind 
With  rippling  wings  that  quiver  not  for  flight, 
But  only  joy,  or,  yielding  to  its  will, 
Runs  down,  a  brook  of  laughter,  through  the  air." 

Such  was  the  charmingly  rural  picture 
which  he  who,  thirty  years  ago,  went  east- 
ward over  Symonds'  Hill  had  given  him  for 


20 


CAMBRIDGE 


nothing,  to  hang  in  the  Gallery  of  Memory. 
But  we  are  a  city  now,  and  Common  Coun 
cils  have  yet  no  notion  of  the  truth  (learned 
long  ago  by  many  a  European  hamlet)  that 
picturesqueness  adds  to  the  actual  money 
value  of  a  town.  To  save  a  few  dollars  in 
gravel,  they  have  cut  a  kind  of  dry  ditch 
through  the  hill,  where  you  suffocate  with 
dust  in  summer,  or  flounder  through  waist- 
deep  snow-drifts  in  winter,  with  no  prospect 
but  the  crumbling  earth-walls  on  either  side. 
The  landscape  was  carried  away  cart-load  by 
cart-load,  and,  dumped  down  on  the  roads, 
forms  a  part  of  that  unfathomable  pudding, 
which  has,  I  fear,  driven  many  a  teamster 
and  pedestrian  to  the  use  of  phrases  not  com- 
monly found  in  English  dictionaries. 

We  called  it  "the  Village"  then  (I  speak 
of  Old  Cambridge),  and  it  was  essentially  an 
English  village,  quiet,  unspeculative,  without 
enterprise,  sufficing  to  itself,  and  only  show- 
ing such  differences  from  the  original  type  as 
the  public  school  and  the  system  of  town  gov* 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO. 


21 


ernment  might  superinduce.  A  few  houses, 
chiefly  old,  stood  around  the  bare  Common, 
with  ample  elbow-room,  and  old  women, 
capped  and  spectacled,  still  peered  through 
the  same  windows  from  which  they  had 
watched  Lord  Percy's  artillery  rumble  by 
to  Lexington,  or  caught  a  glimpse  of  the 
handsome  Virginia  General  who  had  come  to 
wield  our  homespun  Saxon  chivalry.  People 
were  still  living  who  regretted  the  late  un- 
happy separation  from  the  mother  island, 
who  had  seen  no  gentry  since  the  Vassalls 
went,  and  who  thought  that  Boston  had  ill 
kept  the  day  of  her  patron  saint,  Botolph, 
on  the  17th  of  June,  1775.  The  hooks  were 
to  be  seen  from  which  had  swung  the  ham- 
mocks of  Burgoyne's  captive  redcoats.  If 
memory  does  not  deceive  me,  women  still 
washed  clothes  in  the  town  spring,  clear  as 
that  of  Bandusia.  One  coach  sufficed  for 
all  the  travel  to  the  metropolis.  Commence- 
ment had  not  ceased  to  be  the  great  holiday 
of  the  Puritan  Commonwealth,  and  a  fitting 


22 


CAMBRIDGE 


one  it  was,  —  the  festival  of  Santa  Scholas- 
tica,  whose  triumphal  path  one  may  conceive 
strewn  with  leaves  of  spelling-book  instead 
of  bay.  The  students  (scholars  they  were 
called  then)  wore  their  sober  uniform,  not 
ostentatiously  distinctive  or  capable  of  rous- 
ing democratic  envy,  and  the  old  lines  of 
caste  were  blurred  rather  than  rubbed  out, 
as  servitor  was  softened  into  beneficiary. 
The  Spanish  king  was  sure  that  the  gesticu- 
lating student  was  either  mad  or  reading  Don 
Quixote,  and  if,  in  those  days,  you  met  a 
youth  swinging  his  arms  and  talking  to  him- 
self, you  might  conclude  that  he  was  either 
a  lunatic  or  one  who  was  to  appear  in  a 
"part"  at  the  next  Commencement.  A  fa- 
vorite place  for  the  rehearsal  of  these  orations 
was  the  retired  amphitheatre  of  the  Gravel- 
pit,  perched  unregarded  on  whose  dizzy  edge, 
I  have  heard  many  a  burst  of  plusquam 
Ciceronian  eloquence,  and  (often  repeated) 
the  regular  saluto  vos,  prcestantissimce,  &c, 
which  every  year  (with  a  glance  at  the  gal- 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO.  23 

lery)  causes  a  flutter  among  the  fans  inno- 
cent of  Latin,  and  delights  to  applauses  of 
conscious  superiority  the  youth  almost  as 
innocent  as  they.  It  is  curious,  by  the  way, 
to  note  how  plainly  one  can  feel  the  pulse 
of  self  in  the  plaudits  of  an  audience.  At 
a  political  meeting,  if  the  enthusiasm  of  the 
lieges  hang  fire,  it  may  be  exploded  at  once 
by  an  allusion  to  their  intelligence  or  patriot- 
ism ;  and  at  a  literary  festival,  the  first  Latin 
quotation  draws  the  first  applause,  the  clap- 
ping of  hands  being  intended  as  a  tribute 
to  our  own  familiarity  with  that  sonorous 
tongue,  and  not  at  all  as  an  approval  of  the 
particular  sentiment  conveyed  in  it.  For 
if  the  orator  should  say,  "  Well  has  Tacitus 
remarked,  Arnerieani  omnes  quddam  vi  naturce 
furcd  dignissimi"  it  would  be  all  the  same. 
But  the  Gravel-pit  was  patient,  if  irrespon- 
sive ;  nor  did  the  declaimer  always  fail  to 
bring  down  the  house,  bits  of  loosened  earth 
falling  now  and  then  from  the  precipitous 
walls,  their  cohesion   perhaps  overcome  by 


24 


CAMBRIDGE 


the  vibrations  of  the  voice,  and  happily  sat- 
irizing the  effect  of  most  popular  discourses, 
which  prevail  rather  with  the  earthy  than 
the  spiritual  part  of  the  hearer.  Was  it 
possible  for  us  in  those  days  to  conceive  of 
a  greater  potentate  than  the  President  of 
the  University,  in  his  square  doctor's  cap, 
that  still  filially  recalled  Oxford  and  Cam- 
bridge ?  If  there  was  a  doubt,  it  was  sug- 
gested only  by  the  Governor,  and  even  by 
him  on  artillery-election  days  alone,  superbly 
martial  with  epaulets  and  buckskin  breeches, 
and  bestriding  the  war-horse,  promoted  to 
that  solemn  duty  for  his  tameness  and  steady 
habits. 

Thirty  years  ago,  the  town  had  indeed  a 
character.  Railways  and  omnibuses  had  not 
rolled  flat  all  little  social  prominences  and 
peculiarities,  making  every  man  as  much  a 
citizen  everywhere  as  at  home.  No  Charles- 
own  boy  could  come  to  our  annual  festival 
without  fighting  to  avenge  a  certain  tradi 
♦ional  porcine  imputation  against  the  i^ab- 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO. 


25 


ttants  of  that  historic  locality,  and  to  which 
our  youth  gave  vent  in  fanciful  imitations 
of  the  dialect  of  the  sty,  or  derisive  shouts 
of  "  Charlestown  hogs!"  The  penny  news- 
paper had  not  yet  silenced  the  tripod  of  the 
barber,  oracle  of  news.  Everybody  knew 
everybody,  and  all  about  everybody,  and  vil- 
lage wit,  whose  high  'change  was  around  the 
little  market-house  in  the  town  square,  had 
labelled  every  more  marked  individuality  with 
nicknames  that  clung  like  burs.  Things 
were  established  then,  and  men  did  not  run 
through  all  the  figures  on  the  dial  of  society 
so  swiftly  as  now,  when  hurry  and  competi- 
tion seem  to  have  quite  unhung  the  modulat- 
ing pendulum  of  steady  thrift  and  competent 
training.  Some  slow-minded  persons  even 
followed  their  father's  trade,  —  a  humiliat- 
ing spectacle,  rarer  every  day.  We  had  our 
established  loafers,  topers,  proverb-mongers, 
barber,  parson,  nay,  postmaster,  whose  tenure 
was  for  life.  The  great  political  engine  did 
not  then  come  down  at  regular  quadrennial 
2 

\ 


26 


CAMBRIDGE 


intervals,  like  a  nail-cutting  machine,  to  make 
all  official  lives  of  a  standard  length,  and  to 
generate  lazy  and  intriguing  expectancy.  Life 
flowed  in  recognized  channels,  narrower  per- 
haps, but  with  all  the  more  individuality  and 
force. 

There  was  but  one  white-and-yellow-wash- 
er,  whose  own  cottage,  fresh-gleaming  every 
June  through  grape-vine  and  creeper,  was 
his  only  sign  and  advertisement.  He  was 
said  to  possess  a  secret,  which  died  with  him 
like  that  of  Luca  della  Robbia,  and  certainly 
conceived  all  colors  but  white  and  yellow 
lo  savor  of  savagery,  civilizing  the  stems  of 
his  trees  annually  with  liquid  lime,  and 
meditating  how  to  extend  that  candent  bap- 
tism even  to  the  leaves.  His  pie-plants  (the 
best  in  town),  compulsory  monastics,  blanched 
under  barrels,  each  in  his  little  hermitage, 
a  vegetable  Certosa.  His  fowls,  his  ducks, 
ais  geese,  could  not  show  so  much  as  a  gray 
feather  among  them,  and  he  would  have  given 
a  year's  earnings  for  a  white  peacock.  The 


THIRL Y  YEARS  AGO.  27 


flowers  which  decked  his  little  door-yard  were 
whitest  China-asters  and  goldenest  sunflow- 
ers, which  last,  backsliding  from  their  tradi- 
tional Parsee  faith,  used  to  puzzle  us  urchins 
not  a  little  by  staring  brazenly  every  way 
except  towards  the  sun.  Celery,  too,  he 
raised,  whose  virtue  is  its  paleness,  and  the 
silvery  onion,  and  turnip,  which,  though  out- 
wardly conforming  to  the  green  heresies  of 
summer,  nourish  a  purer  faith  subterrane- 
ously,  like  early  Christians  in  the  catacombs. 
In  an  obscure  corner  grew  the  sanguine  beet, 
tolerated  only  for  its  usefulness  in  allaying 
the  asperities  of  Saturday's  salt-fish.  He 
loved  winter  better  than  summer,  because 
Nature  then  played  the  whitewasher,  and 
challenged  with  her  snows  the  scarce  inferior 
purity  of  his  overalls  and  neck-cloth.  I  fancy 
that  he  never  rightly  liked  Commencement, 
for  bringing  so  many  black  coats  together. 
He  founded  no  school  Others  might  essay 
his  art,  and  were  allowed  to  try  their  pren- 
tice hands  on  fences  and  the  like  coarse  sub- 


28 


CAMBRIDGE 


jects,  but  the  ceiling  of  every  housewife 
waited  on  the  leisure  of  Newman  (ichneumon 
the  students  called  him  for  his  diminutive- 
ness),  nor  would  consent  to  other  brush  than 
his.  There  was  also  but  one  brewer,  — 
Lewis,  who  made  the  village  beer,  both 
spruce  and  ginger,  a  grave  and  amiable 
Ethiopian,  making  a  discount  always  to  the 
boys,  and  wisely,  for  they  were  his  chiefest 
patrons.  He  wheeled  his  whole  stock  in  a 
white-roofed  handcart,  on  whose  front  a  sign- 
board presented  at  either  end  an  insurrection- 
ary bottle ;  yet  insurgent  after  no  mad  Gallic 
fashion,  but  soberly  and  Saxonly  discharging 
itself  into  the  restraining  formulary  of  a 
tumbler,  symbolic  of  orderly  prescription. 
The  artist  had  struggled  manfully  with  the 
difficulties  of  his  subject,  but  had  not  suc- 
ceeded so  well  that  we  did  not  often  debate 
in  which  of  the  twin  bottles  Spruce  was 
typified,  and  in  which  Ginger.  We  always 
believed  that  Lewis  mentally  distinguished 
between  them,  but  by  some  peculiarity  occult 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO. 


22 


to  exoteric  eyes.  This  ambulatory  chapel 
of  the  Bacchus  that  gives  the  colic,  but  not 
inebriates,  only  appeared  at  the  Commence- 
ment holidays,  and  the  lad  who  bought  of 
Lewis  laid  out  his  money  well,  getting  re- 
spect as  well  as  beer,  three  sirs  to  every 
glass,  —  M  Beer,  sir  ?  yes.  sir  :  spruce  or  ginger, 
sir?"'  I  can  yet  recall  the  innocent  pride 
with  which  I  walked  away  after  that  some- 
what risky  ceremony,  (for  a  bottle  sometimes 
blew  up.)  dilated  not  alone  with  carbonic 
acid  gas.  but  with  the  more  ethereal  fixed  air 
of  that  titular  flattery.  Xor  was  Lewis  proud. 
When  he  tried  his  fortunes  in  the  capital 
on  Election-days,  and  stood  amid  a  row  of 
rival  venders  in  the  very  flood  of  custom, 
he  never  forgot  his  small  fellow-citizens,  but 
welcomed  them  with  an  assuring  smile,  and 
served  them  with  the  first. 

The  barber's  shop  was  a  museum,  scarce 
second  to  the  larger  one  of  Greenwood  in 
the  metropolis.  The  boy  who  was  to  be 
flipped  there  was  always  accompanied  to  the 


30 


CAMBRIDGE 


sacrifice  by  troops  of  friends,  who  thus  in- 
spected the  curiosities  gratis.  While  the 
watchful  eye  of  R.  wrandered  to  keep  in  check 
these  rather  unscrupulous  explorers,  the  un- 
pausing  shears  would  sometimes  overstep  the 
boundaries  of  strict  tonsorial  prescription,  and 
make  a  notch  through  which  the  phrenological 
developments  could  be  distinctly  seen.  As 
Michael  Angelo's  design  was  modified  by  the 
shape  of  his  block,  so  R.,  rigid  in  artistic 
proprieties,  would  contrive  to  give  an  appear- 
ance of  design  to  this  aberration,  by  making 
it  the  key-note  to  his  work,  and  reducing  the 
whole  head  to  an  appearance  of  premature 
baldness.  What  a  charming  place  it  was, — 
now  full  of  wonder  and  delight !  The  sun- 
ny little  room,  fronting  southwest  upon  the 
Common,  fang  with  canaries  and  Java  spar- 
rows, nor  were  the  familiar  notes  of  robin, 
thrush,  and  bobolink  wanting.  A  large  white 
cockatoo  harangued  vaguely,  at  intervals,  in 
what  we  believed  (on  R.'s  authority)  to  be 
vJhe  Hottentot  language.    He  had  an  unvera- 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO. 


31 


cious  air,  but  what  inventions  of  former  grand- 
eur he  was  indulging  in,  what  sweet  South- 
African  Argos  he  was  remembering,  what 
tropical  heats  and  giant  trees  by  unconjec- 
tured  rivers,  known  only  to  the  wallowing 
hippopotamus,  we  could  only  guess  at.  The 
walls  were  covered  with  curious  old  Dutch 
prints,  beaks  of  albatross  and  penguin,  and 
whales'  teeth  fantastically  engraved.  There 
was  Frederick  the  Great,  with  head  drooped 
plottingly,  and  keen  side-long  glance  from 
under  the  three-cornered  hat.  There  hung 
Bonaparte,  too,  the  long-haired,  haggard  gen- 
eral of  Italy,  his  eyes  sombre  with  prefigured 
destiny ;  and  there  was  his  island  grave  ;  — 
the  dream  and  the  fulfilment.  Good  store 
of  sea-fights  there  was  also ;  above  all,  Paul 
Jones  in  the  Bonhomme  Richard  :  the  smoke 
rolling  courteously  to  leeward,  that  we  might 
see  him  dealing  thunderous  wreck  to  the  two 
hostile  vessels,  each  twice  as  large  as  his  own, 
and  the  reality  of  the  scene  corroborated  by 
atreaks  of  red  paint  leaping  from  the  mouth 

i 


m 


CAMBRIDGE 


of  every  gun.  Suspended  over  the  fireplace, 
with  the  curling-tongs,  were  an  Indian  bow 
and  arrows,  and  in  the  corners  of  the  room 
stood  New  Zealand  paddles  and  war-clubs, 
quaintly  carved.  The  model  of  a  ship  in 
glass  we  variously  estimated  to  be  worth  from 
a  hundred  to  a  thousand  dollars,  H.  rather 
favoring  the  higher  valuation,  though  never 
distinctly  committing  himself.  Among  these 
wonders,  the  only  suspicious  one  was  an 
Indian  tomahawk,  which  had  too  much  the 
peaceful  look  of  a  shingling-hatchet.  Did  any 
rarity  enter  the  town,  it  gravitated  naturally 
to  these  walls,  to  the  very  nail  that  waited  to 
receive  it,  and  where,  the  day  after  its  acces- 
sion, it  seemed  to  have  hung  a  lifetime.  We 
always  had  a  theory  that  R.  was  immensely 
rich,  (how  could  he  possess  so  much  and  be 
otherwise?)  and  that  he  pursued  his  calling 
from  an  amiable  eccentricity.  He  was  a  con- 
scientious artist,  and  never  submitted  it  to  the 
choice  of  his  victim  whether  he  would  be 
perfumed  or  not.    Faithfully  was  the  bottle 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO.  33 


shaken  and  the  odoriferous  mixture  rubbed 
m,  a  fact  redolent  to  the  whole  school-room 
in  the  afternoon.  Sometimes  the  persuasive 
tonsor  would  impress  one  of  the  attendant 
volunteers,  and  reduce  his  poll  to  shoe-brush 
crispness,  at  cost  of  the  reluctant  ninepence 
hoarded  for  Fresh  Pond  and  the  next  half- 
holiday.  So  purely  indigenous  was  our  popu- 
lation then,  that  R.  had  a  certain  exotic  charm, 
a  kind  of  game  flavor,  by  being  a  Dutchman. 

Shall  the  two  groceries  want  their  vates 
sacer,  where  E.  &  W.  I.  goods  and  country 
iprodooce  were  sold  with  an  energy  mitigated 
by  the  quiet  genius  of  the  place,  and  where 
strings  of  urchins  waited,  each  with  cent  in 
hand,  for  the  unweighed  dates  (thus  giving  an 
ordinary  business  transaction  all  the  excite- 
ment of  a  lottery),  and  buying,  not  only  that 
cloying  sweetness,  but  a  dream  also  of  Egypt, 
and  palm-trees,  and  Arabs,  in  which  vision  a 
print  of  the  Pyramids  in  our  geography  tyran- 
nized like  that  taller  thought  of  Cowper's  ? 

At  one  of  these  the  unwearied  students 


34 


CAMBRIDGE 


used  to  ply  a  joke  handed  down  from  class  to 
class.  Enter  A,  and  asks  gravely,  "Have 
you  any  sour  apples,  Deacon  ?  " 

4  Well,  no,  I  have  n't  any  just  now  that 
are  exactly  sour ;  but  there 's  the  bell-flower 
apple,  and  folks  that  like  a  sour  apple  gener- 
ally like  that."    (Exit  A) 

Enter  B.  "Have  you  any  sweet  apples, 
Deacon  ?  " 

44  Well,  no,  I  have  n't  any  just  now  that  are 
exactly  sweet ;  but  there  's  the  bell-flower 
apple,  and  folks  that  like  a  sweet  apple  gen- 
erally like  that."    (Exit  B.) 

There  is  not  even  a  tradition  of  any  one's 
ever  having  turned  the  wary  Deacon's  flank, 
and  his  Laodicean  apples  persisted  to  the  end, 
neither  one  thing  nor  another.  Or  shall  the 
two  town-constables  be  forgotten,  in  whom 
the  law  stood  worthily  and  amply  embodied, 
fit  either  of  them  to  fill  the  uniform  cf  an 
English  beadle  ?  Grim  and  silent  as  Ninevite 
statues  they  stood  on  each  side  of  the  meet- 
mg-house  door  at  Commencement,  propped 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO. 


35 


by  long  staves  of  blue  and  red,  on  which  the 
Indian  with  bow  and  arrow,  and  the  mailed 
arm  with  the  sword,  hinted  at  the  invisible 
sovereignty  of  the  state  ready  to  reinforce 
them,  as 

"  For  Achilles'  portrait  stood  a  spear 
Grasped  in  an  armed  hand." 

Stalwart  and  rubicund  men  they  were,  second 
only,  if  second,  to  S.,  champion  of  the  county, 
and  not  incapable  of  genial  unbendings  when 
the  fasces  were  laid  aside.  One  of  them  still 
survives  in  octogenarian  vigor,  the  Herodotus 
of  village  and  college  legend,  and  may  it  be 
long  ere  he  depart,  to  carry  with  him  the  pat- 
tern of  a  courtesy,  now,  alas  !  old-fashioned, 
but  which  might  profitably  make  part  of  the 
instruction  of  our  youth  among  the  other  hu- 
manities !  Long  may  R.  M.  be  spared  to  us, 
so  genial,  so  courtly,  the  last  man  among  us 
who  will  ever  know  how  to  lift  a  hat  with  the 
nice  graduation  of  social  distinction  !  Some- 
thing of  a  Jeremiah  now,  he  bewails  the  de- 
cline of  our  manners.    "  My  children,"  he  says, 


36 


CAMBRIDGE 


"  say,  4  Yes  sir,'  and  c  No  sir ' ;  my  grand- 
children, 6  Yes  '  and  6  No  ' ;  and  I  am  every 
day  expecting  to  hear  6  D — n  your  eyes  !  * 
for  an  answer  when  I  ask  a  service  of  my 
great-grandchildren.  Why,  sir,  I  can  remem- 
ber when  more  respect  was  paid  to  Gov- 
ernor Hancock's  lackey  at  Commencement, 
than  the  Governor  and  all  his  suite  get  now." 
M.  is  one  of  those  invaluable  men  wrho  re- 
member your  grandfather,  and  value  you  ac- 
cordingly. 

In  those  days  the  population  was  almost 
wholly  without  foreign  admixture.  Two 
Scotch  gardeners  there  were,  —  Rule,  whose 
^daughter  (glimpsed  perhaps  at  church,  or 
possibly  the  mere  Miss  Harris  of  fancy)  the 
students  nicknamed  Anarchy  or  Miss  Rule,  — 
and  later  Fraser,  whom  whiskey  sublimed 
into  a  poet,  full  of  bloody  histories  of  the 
Forty-twa,  and  showing  an  imaginary  French 
bullet,  sometimes  in  one  leg,  sometimes  in 
the  other,  and  sometimes,  toward  nightfall,  in 
both.    With  this  claim  to  military  distinction 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO. 


37 


he  adroitly  contrived  to  mingle  another  to  a 
natural  one,  asserting  double  teeth  all  round 
his  jaws,  and,  having  thus  created  two  sets 
of  doubts,  silenced  both  at  once  by  a  single 
demonstration,  displaying  the  grinders  to  the 
confusion  of  the  infidel. 

The  old  court-house  stood  then  upon  the 
square.  It  has  shrunk  back  out  of  sight  now, 
and  students  box  and  fence  where  Parsons 
once  laid  down  the  law,  and  Ames  and  Dex- 
ter showed  their  skill  in  the  fence  of  argu- 
ment. Times  have  changed,  and  manners, 
since  Chief  Justice  Dana  (father  of  Richard 
the  First,  and  grandfather  of  Richard  the 
Second)  caused  to  be  arrested  for  contempt 
of  court  a  butcher  who  had  come  in  with- 
out a  coat  to  witness  the  administration  of 
his  country's  laws,  and  who  thus  had  his 
curiosity  exemplarily  gratified.  Times  have 
changed  also  since  the  cellar  beneath  it  was 
tenanted  by  the  twin-brothers  Snow.  Oys- 
ter men  were  they  indeed,  silent  in  their 
subterranean  burrow,  and  taking  the  ebbs 
( 


38 


CAMBRIDGE 


and  flows  of  custom  with  bivalvian  serenity. 
Careless  of  the  months  with  an  R  in  them, 
the  maxim  of  Snow  (for  we  knew  them  but  as 
a  unit)  was,  "  When  'ysters  are  good,  they 
air  good ;  and  when  they  ain't,  they  is  r£t" 
Grecian  P.  (may  his  shadow  never  be  less !) 
tells  this,  his  great  laugh  expected  all  the 
while  from  deep  vaults  of  chest,  and  then 
coming  in  at  the  close,  hearty,  contagious, 
mounting  with  the  measured  tread  of  a  jovial 
but  stately  butler  who  brings  ancientest  good- 
fellowship  from  exhaustless  bins,  and  enough, 
without  other  sauce,  to  give  a  flavor  of  stalled 
ox  to  a  dinner  of  herbs.  Let  me  preserve 
here  an  anticipatory  elegy  upon  the  Snows 
written  years  ago  by  some  nameless  college 
rhymer. 

DIFFUGERE  NIVES. 

Here  lies,  or  lie,  —  decide  the  question,  you, 

If  they  were  two  in  one  or  one  in  two,  — 

P.  &  S.  Snow,  whose  memory  shall  not  fade, 

Castor  and  Pollux  of  the  oyster-trade : 

Hatched  from  one  egg,  at  once  the  shell  they  burst, 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO. 


(The  last,  perhaps,  a  P.  S.  to  the  first,) 

So  homoousian  both  in  look  and  soul, 

So  undiscernibly  a  single  whole, 

That  whether  P.  was  S.,  or  S.  was  P., 

Surpassed  all  skill  in  etymology ; 

One  kept  the  shop  at  once,  and  all  we  know 

Is  that  together  they  were  the  Great  Snow, 

A  snow  not  deep,  yet  with  a  crust  so  thick 

It  never  melted  to  the  son  of  Tick ; 

Perpetual  ?  nay,  our  region  was  too  low, 

Too  warm,  too  southern,  for  perpetual  Snow; 

Still,  like  fair  Leda's  sons,  to  whom 't  was  given 

To  take  their  turns  in  Hades  and  in  Heaven, 

Our  new  Dioscuri  would  bravely  share 

The  cellar's  darkness  and  the  upper  air ; 

Twice  every  year  would  each  the  shades  escape, 

And,  like  a  sea-bird,  seek  the  wave-washed  Cape, 

Where  (Rumor  voiced)  one  spouse  sufficed  for  both 

No  bigamist,  for  she  upon  her  oath, 

Unskilled  in  letters,  could  not  make  a  guess 

At  any  difference  twixt  P.  and  S,  — 

A  thing  not  marvellous,  since  Fame  agrees 

They  were  as  little  different  as  two  peas, 

And  she,  like  Paris,  when  his  Helen  laid 

Her  hand  'mid  snows  from  Ida's  top  conveyed 

To  cool  their  wine  of  Chios,  could  not  know, 

Between  those  rival  candors,  which  was  Snow. 

Whiche'er  behind  the  counter  chanced  to  be 

Oped  oysters  oft,  his  clam-shells  seldom  he ; 


40 


CAMBRIDGE 


If  e'er  he  laughed,  't  was  with  no  loud  guffaw, 

The  fun  warmed  through  him  with  a  gradual  thaw ; 

The  nicer  shades  of  wit  were  not  his  gift, 

Nor  was  it  hard  to  sound  Snow's  simple  drift ; 

His  were  plain  jokes,  that  many  a  time  before 

Had  set  his  tarry  messmates  in  a  roar, 

When  floundering  cod  beslimed  the  deck's  wet  planks, — 

The  humorous  specie  of  Newfoundland  banks. 

But  Snow  is  gone,  and,  let  us  hope,  sleeps  well, 
Buried  (his  last  breath  asked  it)  in  a  shell; 
Fate  with  an  oyster-knife  sawed  off  his  thread, 
And  planted  him  upon  his  latest  bed. 

Him  on  the  Stygian  shore  my  fancy  sees 
Noting  choice  shoals  for  oyster  colonies, 
Or,  at  a  board  stuck  full  of  ghostly  forks, 
Opening  for  practice  visionary  Yorks. 
And  whither  he  has  gone,  may  we  too  go,  — 
Since  no  hot  place  were  fit  for  keeping  Snow ! 

Jam  satis  nivis. 


Cambridge  has  long  had  its  port,  but  the 
greater  part  of  its  nw*time  trade  was,  thirty 
years  ago,  intrusted  to  a  single  Argo,  the 
sloop  Harvard,  which  belonged  to  the  Col- 
lege, and  made  annual  voyages  to  that  vague 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO.  41 


Orient  known  as  Down  East,  bringing  back 
the  wood  that,  in  those  days,  gave  to  winter 
life  at  Harvard  a  crackle  and  a  cheerfulness, 
for  the  loss  of  which  the  greater  warmth  of 
anthracite  hardly  compensates.  New  Eng- 
land life,  to  be  genuine,  must  have  in  it  some 
sentiment  of  the  sea,  —  it  was  this  instinct 
that  printed  the  device  of  the  pine-tree  on 
the  old  money  and  the  old  flag, — and  these 
periodic  ventures  of  the  sloop  Harvard  made 
the  old  Viking  fibre  vibrate  in  the  hearts  of 
all  the  village  boys.  What  a  vista  of  mystery 
and  adventure  did  her  sailing  open  to  us ! 
With  what  pride  did  we  hail  her  return ! 
She  was  our  scholiast  upon  Robinson  Crusoe 
and  the  mutiny  of  the  Bounty.  Her  captain 
still  lords  it  over  our  memories,  the  greatest 
sailor  that  ever  sailed  the  seas,  and  we  should 
not  look  at  Sir  John  Franklin  himself  with 
such  admiring  interest  as  that  with  which 
we*  enhaloed  some  larger  boy  who  had  made 
a  voyage  in  her,  and  had  come  back  with- 
out braces  (gallowses  we  called  them)  to  his 
\ 


42 


CAMBRIDGE 


trousers,  and  squirting  ostentatiously  the  juice 
of  that  weed  which  still  gave  him  little  pri- 
vate returns  of  something  very  like  sea-sick- 
ness. All  our  shingle  vessels  were  shaped 
and  rigged  by  her,  who  was  our  glass  of 
naval  fashion  and  our  mould  of  aquatic  form. 
We  had  a  secret  and  wild  delight  in  believing 
that  she  carried  a  gun,  and  imagined  her 
sending  grape  and  canister  among  the  treach- 
erous savages  of  Oldtown.  Inspired  by  her 
were  those  first  essays  at  navigation  on  the 
Winthrop  duck-pond,  of  the  plucky  boy  who 
was  afterwards  to  serve  two  famous  years  be- 
fore the  mast.  The  greater  part  of  what  is 
now  Cambridgeport  was  then  (in  the  native 
dialect)  a  huckleberry  pastur.  Woods  were 
not  wanting  on  its  outskirts,  of  pine,  and 
oak,  and  maple,  and  the  rarer  tupelo  with 
downward  limbs.  Its  veins  did  not  draw 
their  blood  from  the  quiet  old  heart  of  the 
village,  but  it  had  a  distinct  being  of  its  own, 
and  was  rather  a  great  caravansary  than  a 
luburb.    The  chief  feature  of  the  place  was 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO. 


43 


its  inns,  of  which  there  were  five,  with  vast 
barns  and  court-yards,  which  the  railroad  was 
to  make  as  silent  and  deserted  as  the  palaces 
of  Nimroud.  Great  white- topped  wagons, 
each  drawn  by  double  files  of  six  or  eight 
horses,  with  its  dusty  bucket  swinging  from 
the  hinder  axle,  and  its  grim  bull-dog  trotting 
ailent  underneath,  or  in  midsummer  panting 
on  the  lofty  perch  beside  the  driver,  (how 
elevated  thither  baffled  conjecture,)  brought 
all  the  wares  and  products  of  the  country 
to  their  mart  and  seaport  in  Boston.  These 
filled  the  inn-yards,  or  were  ranged  side  by 
side  under  broad-roofed  sheds,  and  far  into 
the  night  the  mirth  of  their  lusty  drivers 
clamored  from  the  red-curtained  bar-room, 
while  the  single  lantern,  swaying  to  and  fro 
in  the  black  cavern  of  the  stables,  made  a 
Rembrandt  of  the  group  of  ostlers  and  horses 
below.  There  were,  beside  the  taverns, 
some  huge  square  stores  where  groceries  were 
sold,  some  houses,  by  whom  or  why  inhabited 
fvas  to  us  boys  a  problem,  and,  on  the  edge 


44 


CAMBRIDGE 


of  the  marsh,  a  currier's  shop,  where,  at 
high  tide,  on  a  floating  platform,  men  were 
always  beating  skins  in  a  way  to  remind  one 
of  Don  Quixote's  fulling-mills.  Nor  did  these 
make  all  the  Port.  As  there  is  always  a 
Coming  Man  who  never  comes,  so  there  is 
a  man  who  always  comes  (it  may  be  only 
a  quarter  of  an  hour)  too  early.  This  man, 
so  far  as  the  Port  is  concerned,  was  Rufus 
Davenport.  Looking  at  the  marshy  flats  of 
Cambridge,  and  considering  their  nearness  to 
Boston,  he  resolved  that  there  should  grow 
up  a  suburban  Venice.  Accordingly,  the 
marshes  were  bought,  canals  were  dug,  ample 
for  the  commerce  of  both  Indies,  and  four 
or  five  rows  of  brick  houses  were  built  to 
meet  the  first  wants  of  the  wading  settlers 
who  were  expected  to  rush  in  —  whence  ? 
This  singular  question  had  never  occurred  to 
the  enthusiastic  projector.  There  are  laws 
which  govern  human  migrations  quite  beyond 
the  control  of  the  speculator,  as  many  a  man 
with  desirable  building-lots  has  discovered  to 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO  45 


liis  cost.  Why  mortal  men  will  pay  more 
for  a  chess-board  square  in  that  swamp,  than 
for  an  acre  on  the  breezy  upland  close  by, 
who  shall  say?  And  again,  why,  having 
shown  such  a  passion  for  your  swamp,  they 
are  so  coy  of  mine,  who  shall  say?  Not 
certainly  any  one  who,  like  Davenport,  had 
got  up  too  early  for  his  generation.  If  we 
could  only  carry  that  slow,  imperturbable  old 
clock  of  Opportunity,  that  never  strikes  a 
second  too  soon  or  too  late,  in  our  fobs,  and 
push  the  hands  forward  as  we  can  those  of 
our  watches  !  With  a  foreseeing  economy  of 
space  which  now  seems  ludicrous,  the  roofs 
of  this  forlorn-hope  of  houses  were  made  flat, 
that  the  swarming  population  might  have 
where  to  dry  their  clothes.  But  A.  U.  C. 
30  showed  the  same  view  as  A.  U.  C.  1, — 
only  that  the  brick  blocks  looked  as  if  they 
had  been  struck  by  a  malaria.  The  dull 
weed  upholstered  the  decaying  wharves,  and 
the  only  freight  that  heaped  them  was  the 
kelp  and  eel-grass  left  by  higher  floods.  In- 

\ 


46  CAMBRIDGE 

stead  of  a  Venice,  behold  a  Torzelo !  The 
unfortunate  projector  took  to  the  last  refuge 
of  the  unhappy  —  book-making,  and  bored 
the  reluctant  public  with  what  he  called  a 
right-aim  Testament,  prefaced  by  a  recom- 
mendation from  General  Jackson,  who  per- 
haps, from  its  title,  took  it  for  some  treatise 
on  ball-practice. 

But  even  Cambridgeport,  my  dear  Storg, 
did  not  want  associations  poetic  and  venerable. 
The  stranger  who  took  the  "  Hourly  "  at  Old 
Cambridge,  if  he  *vere  a  physiognomist  and 
student  of  character,  might  perhaps  have 
had  his  curiosity  excited  by  a  person  who 
mounted  the  coach  at  the  Port.  So  refined 
was  his  whole  appearance,  so  fastidiously  neat 
his  apparel,  —  but  with  a  neatness  that  seemed 
less  the  result  of  care  and  plan,  than  a  some- 
thing as  proper  to  the  man  as  whiteness  to  the 
lily,  —  that  you  would  have  at  once  classed  him 
with  those  individuals,  rarer  than  great  cap- 
tains and  almost  as  rare  as  great  poets,  whom 
Nature  sends  into  the  world  to  fill  the  arduous 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO.  47 

office  of  Gentleman.  Were  you  ever  em- 
peror of  that  Barataria  which  under  your 
peaceful  sceptre  would  present,  of  course,  a 
model  of  government,  this  remarkable  person 
should  be  Duke  of  Bienseance  and  Master  of 
Ceremonies.  There  are  some  men  whom 
destiny  has  endowed  with  the  faculty  of  ex- 
ternal neatness,  whose  clothes  are  repellent 
of  dust  and  mud,  whose  unwithering  white 
neck-cloths  persevere  to  the  day's  end,  unap- 
peasably  seeing  the  sun  go  down  upon  their 
starch,  and  whose  linen  makes  you  fancy 
them  heirs  in  the  maternal  line  to  the  instinct? 
of  all  the  washerwomen  from  Eve  downward 
There  are  others  whose  inward  natures  pos 
sess  this  fatal  cleanness,  incapable  of  moral 
dirt  spot.  You  are  not  long  in  discovering 
that  the  stranger  combines  in  himself  both 
these  properties.  A  nimbus  of  hair,  fine  as 
an  infant's,  and  early  white,  showing  refine- 
ment of  organization  and  the  predominance 
of  the  spiritual  over  the  physical,  undulated 
and  floated  around  a  face  that  seemed  lika 


48  CAMBRIDGE  % 

pale  flame,  and  over  which  the  flitting  shades 
of  expression  chased  each  other,  fugitive  and 
gleaming  as  waves  upon  a  field  of  rye.  It 
was  a  countenance  that,  without  any  beauty 
of  feature,  was  very  beautiful.  I  have  said 
that  it  looked  like  pale  flame,  and  can  find  no 
other  words  for  the  impression  it  gave.  Here 
was  a  man  all  soul,  whose  body  seemed  a 
lamp  of  finest  clay,  whose  service  was  to  feed 
with  magic  oils,  rare  and  fragrant,  that  waver- 
ing fire  which  hovered  over  it.  You,  who 
are  an  adept  in  such  matters,  would  have 
detected  in  the  eyes  that  artist-look  which 
seems  to  see  pictures  ever  in  the  air,  and 
which,  if  it  fall  on  you,  makes  you  feel  as 
if  all  the  world  were  a  gallery,  and  yourself 
the  rather  indifferent  Portrait  of  a  Gentleman 
hung  therein.  As  the  stranger  brushes  by 
you  in  alighting,  you  detect  a  single  incon- 
gruity,—  a  smell  of  dead  tobacco-smoke.  You 
ask  his  name,  and  the  answer  is,  "  Mr.  All- 
ston." 

"Mr.  Allston!"  and  you  resolve  to  note 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO.  4$ 


down  at  once  in  your  diary  every  look, 
every  gesture,  every  word  of  the  great 
painter  ?  Not  in  the  least.  You  have  the 
true  Anglo-Norman  indifference,  and  most 
likely  never  think  of  him  again  till  you  hear 
that  one  of  his  pictures  has  sold  for  a  great 
price,  and  then  contrive  to  let  your  grand- 
children know  twice  a  week  that  you  met  him 
once  in  a  coach,  and  that  he  said,  "  Excuse 
me,  sir,"  in  a  very  Titianesque  manner,  when 
he  stumbled  over  your  toes  in  getting  out. 
Hitherto  Boswell  is  quite  as  unique  as  Shake- 
speare. The  country-gentleman,  journeying 
up  to  London,  inquires  of  Mistress  Davenant 
at  the  Oxford  inn  the  name  of  his  pleasant 
companion  of  the  night  before.  "  Master 
Shakespeare,  an 't  please  your  worship."  And 
vJie  Justice,  not  without  a  sense  of  the  un- 
bending, says,  "  Truly,  a  merry  and  conceited 
gentleman  ! "  It  is  lucky  for  the  peace  of 
great  men  that  the  world  seldom  finds  out 
contemporaneously  who  its  great  men  are,  or, 
perhaps,  that  each  man  esteems  himself  the 

3  D 


50 


CAMBRIDGE 


fortunate  he  who  shall  draw  the  lot  of  mem- 
ory from  the  helmet  of  the  future.  Had  the 
eyes  of  some  Stratford  burgess  been  achro- 
matic telescopes,  capable  of  a  perspective  of 
two  hundred  years  !  But,  even  then,  would 
not  his  record  have  been  fuller  of  says  J's 
than  says  he 's  ?  Nevertheless,  it  is  curious  to 
consider  from  what  infinitely  varied  points  of 
view  we  might  form  our  estimate  of  a  great 
man's  character,  when  we  remember  that  he 
had  his  points  of  contact  with  the  butcher, 
the  baker,  and  the  candlestick-maker,  as  well 
as  with  the  ingenious  A,  the  sublime  B,  and 
the  Right  Honorable  C.  If  it  be  true  that  no 
man  ever  clean  forgets  everything,  and  that 
the  act  of  drowning  (as  -is  asserted)  forth- 
with brightens  up  all  those  o'er-rusted  im- 
pressions, would  it  not  be  a  curious  experi- 
ment, if,  after  a  remarkable  person's  death,  the 
public,  eager  for  minutest  particulars,  should 
gather  together  all  who  had  ever  been  brought 
into  relations  with  him,  and,  submerging  them 
to  the  hair's-breadth  hitherward  of  the  drown- 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO.  51 


ing-point,  subject  them  to  strict  cross-exami- 
nation by  the  Humane  Society,  as  soon  as 
they  become  conscious  between  the  resusci- 
tating blankets  ?  All  of  us  probably  have 
brushed  against  destiny  in  the  street,  have 
shaken  hands  with  it,  fallen  asleep  with  it  in 
railway  carriages,  and  knocked  heads  with  it 
in  some  one  or  other  of  its  yet  unrecognized 
incarnations. 

Will  it  seem  like  presenting  a  tract  to  a  col- 
porteur, my  dear  Storg,  if  I  say  a  word  or  two 
about  an  artist  to  you  over  there  in  Italy? 
Be  patient,  and  leave  your  button  in  my 
grasp  yet  a  little  longer.  A  person  whose 
opinion  is  worth  having  once  said  to  me,  that, 
however  one's  notions  might  be  modified  by 
going  to  Europe,  one  always  came  back  with 
a  higher  esteem  for  Allston.  Certainly  he  is 
thus  far  the  greatest  English  painter  of  his- 
torical subjects.  And  only  consider  how 
strong  must  have  been  the  artistic  bias  in 
him,  to  have  made  him  a  painter  at  all  under 
the  circumstances.    There  were  no  traditions 


52 


CAMBRIDGE 


of  art,  so  necessary  for  guidance  and  inspira- 
tion. Blackburn,  Smibert,  Copley,  Trumbull, 
Stuart,  —  it  was,  after  all,  but  a  Brentford 
sceptre  which  their  heirs  could  aspire  to,  and 
theirs  were  not  names  to  conjure  with,  like 
those  from  which  Fame,  as  through  a  silver 
trumpet,  had  blown  for  three  centuries.  Cop- 
ley and  Stuart  were  both  remarkable  men ; 
but  the  one  painted  like  an  inspired  silk- 
mercer,  and  the  other  seems  to  have  mixed 
his  colors  with  the  claret  of  which  he  and  his 
generation  were  so  fond.  And  what  could  a 
successful  artist  hope  for,  at  that  time,  beyond 
the  mere  wages  of  his  work?  His  picture 
would  hang  in  cramped  back-parlors,  between 
deadly  cross-fires  of  lights,  sure  of  the  garret 
or  the  auction-room  erelong,  in  a  country 
where  the  nomad  population  carry  no  house- 
hold gods  with  them  but  their  five  wits  and 
their  ten  fingers.  As  a  race,  we  care  noth- 
ing about  Art ;  but  the  Puritan  and  the 
Quaker  are  the  only  Englishmen  who  have 
had  pluck  enough  to  confess  it.    If  it  were 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO. 


53 


surprising  that  Allston  should  have  become 
a  painter  at  all,  how  almost  miraculous  that 
he  should  have  been  a  great  and  original  one ! 
We  call  him  original  deliberately,  because, 
though  his  school  is  essentially  Italian,  it  is 
of  less  consequence  where  a  man  buys  his 
tools,  than  what  use  he  makes  of  them. 
Enough  English  artists  went  to  Italy  and 
came  back  painting  history  in  a  very  Anglo- 
Saxon  manner,  and  creating  a  school  as  melo- 
dramatic as  the  French,  without  its  perfection 
in  technicalities.  But  Allston  carried  thith- 
er a  nature  open  on  the  southern  side,  and 
brought  it  back  so  steeped  in  rich  Italian  sun- 
shine that  trie  east  winds  (whether  physical 
or  intellectual)  of  Boston  and  the  dusts  of 
Cambridgeport  assailed  it  in  vain.  To  that 
bare  wooden  studio  one  might  go  to  breathe 
Venetian  air,  and,  better  yet,  the  very  spirit 
wherein  the  elder  brothers  of  Art  labored, 
etherealized  by  metaphysical  speculation,  and 
sublimed  by  religious  fervor.  The  beautiful 
old  man  !    Here  was  genius  with  no  volcanic 


\ 


54 


CAMBRIDGE 


explosions  (the  mechanic  result  of  vulgar 
gunpowder  often),  but  lovely  as  a  Lapland 
night;  here  was  fame,  not  sought  after  nor 
worn  in  any  cheap  French  fashion  as  a  ribbon 
at  the  button-hole,  but  so  gentle,  so  retiring, 
that  it  seemed  no  more  than  an  assured  and 
emboldened  modesty ;  here  was  ambition, 
undebased  by  rivalry  and  incapable  of  the 
sidelong  look  ;  and  all  these  massed  and  har- 
monized together  into  a  purity  and  depth 
of  character,  into  a  tone,  wdiicli  made  the 
daily  life  of  the  man  the  greatest  master- 
piece of  the  artist. 

But  let  us  go  back  to  the  Old  Town. 
Thirty  years  since,  the  Muster  and  the  Corn- 
wallis  allowed  some  vent  to  those  natural  in- 
stincts which  Puritanism  scotched,  but  not 
killed.  The  Cornwallis  had  entered  upon  the 
estates  of  the  old  Guy-Fawkes  procession,  con- 
fiscated by  the  Revolution.  It  was  a  masquer- 
ade, in  which  that  grave  and  suppressed  hu- 
mor, of  which  the  Yankees  are  fuller  than 
other  people,  burst  through  all  restraints,  and 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO.  55 


disported  itself  in  all  the  wildest  vagaries  of 
fun.  Commonly  the  Yankee  in  his  pleasures 
suspects  the  presence  of  Public  Opinion  as 
a  detective,  and  accordingly  is  apt  to  pinion 
himself  in  his  Sunday  suit.  It  is  a  curious 
commentary  on  the  artificiality  of  our  lives, 
that  men  must  be  disguised  and  masked  be- 
fore they  will  venture  into  the  obscurer  cor- 
ners of  their  individuality,  and  display  the 
true  features  of  their  nature.  One  remarked 
it  in  the  Carnival,  and  one  especially  noted 
it  here  among  a  race  naturally  self-restrained ; 
for  Silas  and  Ezra  and  Jonas  were  not  only 
disguised  as  Redcoats,  Continentals,  and  In- 
dians, but  not  unfrequently  disguised  in  drink 
also.  It  is  a  question  whether  the  Ly- 
ceum, where  the  public  is  obliged  to  com- 
prehend all  vagrom  men,  supplies  the  place 
of  the  old  popular  amusements.  A  hun- 
dred and  fifty  years  ago,  Cotton  Mather  be- 
wails the  carnal  attractions  of  the  tavern 
and  the  training-field,  and  tells  of  an  old 
Indian  who  imperfectly  understood  the  Eng- 


56 


CAMBRIDGE 


lish  tongue,  but  desperately  mastered  enough 
of  it  (when  under  sentence  of  death)  to 
express  a  desire  for  instant  hemp  rather  than 
listen  to  any  more  ghostly  consolations.  Puri- 
tanism—  I  am  perfectly  aware  how  great  a 
debt  we  owe  it  —  tried  over  again  the  old 
experiment  of  driving  out  nature  with  a  pitch- 
fork, and  had  the  usual  success.  It  was  like 
a  ship  inwardly  on  fire,  whose  hatches  must 
be  kept  hermetically  battened  down ;  for  the 
admittance  of  an  ounce  of  Heaven's  own 
natural  air  would  explode  it  utterly.  Morals 
can  never  be  safely  embodied  in  the  consta- 
ble. Polished,  cultivated,  fascinating  Mephis- 
topheles  !  it  is  for  the  ungovernable  breakings- 
away  of  the  soul  from  unnatural  compressions 
that  thou  waitest  with  a  deprecatory  smile. 
Then  it  is  that  thou  offerest  thy  gentlemanly 
arm  to  unguarded  youth  for  a  pleasant  stroll 
through  the  City  of  Destruction,  and,  as  a 
special  favor,  introducest  him  to  the  bewitch- 
ing Miss  Circe,  and  to  that  model  of  the 
hospitable  old  English  gentleman,  Mr.  Comus 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO.  57 

But  the  Muster  and  the  Cornwallis  were 
not  peculiar  to  Cambridge.  Commencement- 
day  was.  Saint  Pedagogus  was  a  worthy 
whose  feast  could  be  celebrated  by  men  who 
quarrelled  with  minced-pies,  and  blasphemed 
custard  through  the  nose.  The  holiday  pre- 
served all  the  features  of  an  English  fair. 
Stations  were  marked  out  beforehand  by  the 
town  constables,  and  distinguished  by  num- 
bered stakes.  These  were  assigned  to  the 
different  venders  of  small  wares  and  exhibiters 
of  rarities,  whose  canvas  booths,  beginning  at 
the  market-place,  sometimes  half  encircled  the 
Common  with  their  jovial  embrace.  Now  all 
the  Jehoiada-boxes  in  town  were  forced  to 
give  up  their  rattling  deposits  of  specie,  if  not 
through  the  legitimate  orifice,  then  to  the 
brute  force  of  the  hammer.  For  hither  were 
come  all  the  wonders  of  the  world,  making 
the  Arabian  Nights  seem  possible,  and  which 
we  beheld  for  half  price  ;  not  without  min- 
gled emotions,  —  pleasure  at  the  economy,  and 
shame  at  not  paying  the  more  manly  fee. 

\ 


58 


CAMBRIDGE 


Here  the  mummy  unveiled  her  withered 
charms,  —  a  more  marvellous  Ninon,  still  at- 
tractive in  her  three-thousandth  year.  Here 
were  the  Siamese  twins  ;  ah  !  if  all  such  forced 
and  unnatural  unions  were  made  a  show  of! 
Here  wrere  the  flying  horses  (their  supernatu- 
ral effect  injured  —  like  that  of  some  poems  — 
by  the  visibility  of  the  man  who  turned  the 
crank),  on  which,  as  we  tilted  at  the  ring,  we 
felt  our  shoulders  tingle  with  the  accolade,  and 
heard  the  clink  of  golden  spurs  at  our  heels. 
Are  the  realities  of  life  ever  worth  half  so 
much  as  its  cheats  ?  And  are  there  any  feasts 
half  so  filling  at  the  price  as  those  Barmecide 
ones  spread  for  us  by  Imagination  ?  Hither 
came  the  Canadian  giant,  surreptitiously  seen, 
without  price,  as  he  alighted,  in  broad  day, 
(giants  were  alwTays  foolish,)  at  the  tavern. 
Hither  came  the  great  horse  Columbus,  with 
shoes  two  inches  thick,  and  more  wisely  in- 
troduced by  night.  In  the  trough  of  the 
town-pump  might  be  seen  the  mermaid,  its 
poor  monkey's  head  carefully  sustained  above 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO.  59 


water,  to  keep  it  from  drowning.  There  were 
dwarfs,  also,  who  danced  and  sang,  and  many 
a  proprietor  regretted  the  transaudient  proper- 
ties of  canvas,  which  allowed  the  frugal  public 
to  share  in^the  melody  without  entering  the 
booth.  Is  it  a  slander  of  J.  H.,  who  reports 
that  he  once  saw  a  deacon,  eminent  for  psal- 
mody, lingering  near  one  of  those  vocal  tents, 
and,  with  an  assumed  air  of  abstraction,  fur- 
tively drinking  in,  with  unhabitual  ears,  a 
song,  not  secular  merely,  but  with  a  dash  of 
libertinism  ?  The  New  England  proverb  says, 
"All  deacons  are  good,  but  —  there 's  odds  in 
deacons."  On  these  days  Snow  became  super- 
terranean,  and  had  a  stand  in  the  square,  and 
Lewis  temperately  contended  with  the  strong- 
er fascinations  of  egg-pop.  But  space  would 
fail  me  to  make  a  catalogue  of  everything. 
No  doubt,  Wisdom  also,  as  usual,  had  her 
auiet  booth  at  the  corner  of  some  street,  with- 
out entrance-fee,  and,  even  at  that  rate,  got 
never  a  customer  the  whole  day  long.  For 
the  bankrupt  afternoon  there  were  peop-shows, 
at  a  cent  each. 
\ 


60 


CAMBRIDGE 


But  all  these  shows  and  their  showmen  are 
as  clean  gone  now  as  those  of  Caesar  and 
Timour  and  Napoleon,  for  which  the  world 
paid  dearer.  They  are  utterly  gone  out,  not 
leaving  so  much  as  a  snuff  behind,  —  as  little 
thought  of  now  as  that  John  Robins,  who 
was  once  so  considerable  a  phenomenon  as  to 
be  esteemed  the  last  great  Antichrist  and  son 
of  perdition  by  the  entire  sect  of  Muggleto- 
nians.  Were  Commencement  what  it  used  to 
be,  I  should  be  tempted  to  take  a  booth  my- 
self, and  try  an  experiment  recommended  by 
a  satirist  of  some  merit,  whose  works  were 
long  ago  dead  and  (I  fear)  deedeed  to  boot. 

"  Menenius,  thou  who  fain  wouldst  know  how  calmly  men 
can  pass 

Those  biting  portraits  of  themselves,  disguised  as  fox  or 
ass,  — 

Go  borrow  coin  enough  to  buy  a  full-length  psyche-glass, 
Engage  a  rather  darkish  room  in  some  well-sought  position, 
And  let  the  town  break  out  with  bills,  so  much  per  head 
admission,  — 

Great  natural  curiosity  !  !    The  biggest  lining 
fool ! ! 

Arrange  your  mirror  cleverly,  before  it  set  a  stool, 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO. 


61 


Admit  the  public  one  by  one,  place  each  upon  the  seat, 
Draw  up  the  curtain,  let  him  look  his  fill,  and  then  re- 
treat. 

Smith  mounts  and  takes  a  thorough  view,  then  comes 

serenely  down, 
Goes  home  and  tells  his  wife  the  thing  is  curiously  like 

Brown  ; 

Brown  goes  and  stares,  and  tells  his  wife  the  wonder's 
core  and  pith 

Is  that 't  is  just  the  counterpart  of  that  conceited  Smith. 
Life  calls  us  all  to  such  a  show :  Menenius,  trust  in  me, 
While  thou  to  see  thy  neighbor  smil'st,  he  does  the  same 
for  thee." 

My  dear  Storg,  would  you  come  to  my 
show,  and,  instead  of  looking  in  my  glass, 
insist  on  taking  your  money's  worth  in  star- 
ing at  the  exhibitor? 

Not  least  among  the  curiosities  which  the 
day  brought  togeth?r  were  some  of  the  grad- 
uates, posthumous  men,  as  it  were,  disen- 
tombed from  country  parishes  and  district- 
schools,  but  perennial  also,  in  whom  freshly 
survived  all  the  college  jokes,  and  who  had 
no  intelligence  later  than  their  Senior  year. 
These  had  gathered  to  eat  the  College  dinner, 


62 


CAMBRIDGE 


and  to  get  the  Triennial  Catalogue  (their  libro 
(Foro),  referred  to  oftener  than  any  volume  but 
the  Concordance.  Aspiring  men  they  were 
certainly,  but  in  a  right  unworldly  way ;  this 
scholastic  festival  opening  a  peaceful  path  to 
the  ambition  which  might  else  have  devastated 
mankind  with  Prolusions  on  the  Pentateuch, 
or  Genealogies  of  the  Dormouse  Family.  For 
since  in  the  academic  processions  the  classes 
are  ranked  in  the  order  of  their  graduation, 
and  he  has  the  best  chance  at  the  dinner  who 
has  the  fewest  teeth  to  eat  it  with,  so,  by 
degrees,  there  springs  up  a  competition  in 
longevity,  —  the  prize  contended  for  being 
the  oldest  surviving  graduateship.  This  is  an 
office,  it  is  true,  without  emolument,  but  hav- 
ing certain  advantages,  nevertheless.  The 
incumbent,  if  he  come  to  Commencement,  is 
a  prodigious  lion,  and  commonly  gets  a  para- 
graph in  the  newspapers  once  a  year  with 
the  (fiftieth)  last  survivor  of  Washington's 
Life-Guard.  If  a  clergyman,  he  is  expected 
to  ask  a  blessing  and  return  thanks  at  the 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO. 


dinner,  a  function  which  he  performs  with 
centenarian  longanimity,  as  if  he  reckoned 
the  ordinary  life  of  man  to  be  fivescore  years, 
and  that  a  grace  must  be  long  to  reach  so 
far  away  as  heaven.  Accordingly,  this  silent 
race  is  watched,  on  the  course  of  the  Cata- 
logue, with  an  interest  worthy  of  Newmarket ; 
and  as  star  after  star  rises  in  the  galaxy  of 
death,  till  one  name  is  left  alone,  an  oasis 
of  life  in  the  stellar  desert,  it  grows  solemn. 
The  natural  feeling  is  reversed,  and  it  is  the 
solitary  life  that  becomes  sad  and  monitory, 
the  Stylites  there  on  the  lonely  top  of  his 
century-pillar,  who  has  heard  the  passing-bell 
of  youth,  love,  friendship,  hope,  —  of  every- 
thing but  immitigable  eld. 

Dr.  K.  was  President  of  the  University 
then,  a  man  of  genius,  but  of  genius  that 
evaded  utilization,  —  a  great  water-power,  but 
without  rapids,  and  flowing  with  too  smooth 
and  gentle  a  current  to  be  set  turning  wheels 
and  whirling  spindles.  His  was  not  that  rest- 
less genius  of  which  the  man  seems  to  be 


64  CAMBRIDGE 


merely  the  representative,  and  which  wreaks 
itself  in  literature  or  politics,  but  of  that  milder 
sort,  quite  as  genuine,  and  perhaps  of  more 
contemporaneous  value,  which  is  the  man, 
permeating  the  whole  life  with  placid  force, 
and  giving  to  word,  look,  and  gesture  a  mean- 
ing only  justifiable  by  our  belief  in  a  reserved 
power  of  latent  reinforcement.  The  man  of 
talents  possesses  them  like  so  many  tools,  does 
his  job  with  them,  and  there  an  end ;  but  the 
man  of  genius  is  possessed  by  it,  and  it  makes 
him  into  a  book  or  a  life  according  to  its 
whim.  Talent  takes  the  existing  moulds,  and 
makes  its  castings,  better  or  worse,  of  richer 
or  baser  metal,  according  to  knack  and  op- 
portunity ;  but  genius  is  always  shaping  new 
ones,  and  runs  the  man  in  them,  so  that  there 
is  always  that  human  feel  in  its  results 
which  gives  us  a  kindred  thrill.  What  it  will 
make,  we  can  only  conjecture,  contented  al- 
ways with  knowing  the  infinite  balance  of 
possibility  against- which  it  can  draw  at  pleas- 
ure.   Have  you  ever  seen  a  man  whose  check 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO. 


65 


would  be  honored  for  a  million  pay  his  toll 
of  one  cent?  and  has  not  that  bit  of  copper, 
no  bigger  than  your  own,  and  piled  with  it 
by  the  careless  toll-man,  given  you  a  tingling 
vision  of  what  golden  bridges  Tie  could  pass,  — 
into  what  Elysian  regions  of  taste  and  enjoy- 
ment and  culture,  barred  to  the  rest  of  us? 
Something  like  it  is  the  impression  made  by 
such  characters  as  K.'s  on  those  who  come 
in  contact  with  them. 

There  was  that  in  the  soft  and  rounded  (I 
had  almost  said  melting)  outlines  of  his  face 
which  reminded  one  of  Chaucer.  The  head 
had  a  placid  yet  dignified  droop  like  his.  He 
was  an  anachronism,  fitter  to  have  been  Ab- 
bot of  Fountains  or  Bishop  Golias,  courtier 
and  priest,  humorist  and  lord  spiritual,  all  in 
one,  than  for  the  mastership  of  a  provincial 
college,  which  combined,  with  its  purely  scho- 
lastic functions,  those  of  accountant  and  chief 
of  police.  For  keeping  books  he  was  incom- 
petent (unless  it  were  those  he  borrowed), 
and  the  only  discipline  he  exercised  was  by 

E 


66 


CAMBRIDGE 


the  unobtrusive  pressure  of  a  gentlemanliness 
which  rendered  insubordination  to  him  impos- 
sible. But  the  world  always  judges  a  man 
(and  rightly  enough,  too)  by  his  little  faults, 
which  he  shows  a  hundred  times  a  day,  rather 
than  by  his  great  virtues,  which  he  discloses 
perhaps  but  once  in  a  lifetime,  and  to  a  single 
person,  —  nay,  in  proportion  as  they  are  rarer, 
and  he  is  nobler,  is  shyer  of  letting  their  ex- 
istence be  known  at  all.  He  was  one  of  those 
misplaced  persons  whose  misfortune  it  is  that 
their  lives  overlap  two  distinct  eras,  and  are 
already  so  impregnated  with  one  that  they 
can  never  be  in  healthy  sympathy  with  the 
other.  Born  when  the  New  England  clergy 
were  still  an  establishment  and  an  aristocracy, 
and  when  office  was  almost  always  for  life, 
and  often  hereditary,  he  lived  to  be  thrown 
upon  a  time  when  avocations  of  all  colors 
might  be  shuffled  together  in  the  life  of  one 
man,  like  a  pack  of  cards,  so  that  you  could 
not  prophesy  that  he  who  was  ordained  to-day 
might  not  accept  a  colonelcy  of  filibusters  to- 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO.  67 


morrow.  Such  temperaments  as  his  attach 
themselves,  like  barnacles,  to  what  seems  per- 
manent ;  but  presently  the  good  ship  Progress 
weighs  anchor,  and  whirls  them  away  from 
drowsy  tropic  inlets  to  arctic  waters  of  unnat- 
ural icev  To  such  crustaceous  natures,  created 
to  cling  upon  the  immemorial  rock  amid  softest 
mosses,  comes  the  bustling  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury and  says,  "  Come,  come,  bestir  yourself 
and  be  practical !  get  out  of  that  old  shell  of 
yours  forthwith !  "  Alas !  to  get  out  of  the 
shell  is  to  die  ! 

One  of  the  old  travellers  in  South  America 
tells  of  fishes  that  built  their  nests  in  trees 
(piscium,  et  siimma  hcesit  genus  ulmo),  and 
gives  a  print  of  the  mother  fish  upon  her  nest, 
while  her  mate  mounts  perpendicularly  to  her 
without  aid  of  legs  or  wings.  Life  shows 
plenty  of  such  incongruities  between  a  man's 
place  and  his  nature,  (not  so  easily  got  over 
as  by  the  traveller's  undoubting  engraver,) 
and  one  cannot  help  fancying  that  K.  was 
an  instance  in  point.    He  never  encountered, 


88 


CAMBRIDGE 


one  would  say,  the  attraction  proper  to  draw 
out  his  native  force.  Certainly,  few  men  who 
impressed  others  so  strongly,  and  of  whom  so 
many  good  things  are  remembered,  left  less 
behind  them  to  justify  contemporary  esti- 
mates. He  printed  nothing,  and  was,  per- 
haps, one  of  those  the  electric  sparkles  of 
whose  brains,  discharged  naturally  and  health- 
ily in  conversation,  refuse  to  pass  through  the 
nonconducting  medium  of  the  inkstand.  His 
ana  would  make  a  delightful  collection.  One 
or  two  of  his  official  ones  will  be  in  place 
here.  Hearing  that  Porter's  flip  (which  was 
exemplary)  had  too  great  an  attraction  for 
the  collegians,  he  resolved  to  investigate  the 
matter  himself.  Accordingly,  entering  the 
old  inn  one  day,  he  called  for  a  mug  of  it, 
and,  having  drunk  it,  said,  "And  so,  Mr. 
Porter,  the  young  gentlemen  come  to  drink 
your  flip,  do  they  ?  "  "  Yes,  sir,  —  some- 
times." "Ah,  well,  I  should  think  they 
would.  Good  day,  Mr.  Porter,"  and  de- 
parted, saying  nothing  more ;  for  he  always 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO. 


69 


wisely  allowed  for  tne  existence  of  a  certain 
amount  of  human  nature  in  ingenuous  youth. 
At  another  time  the  "  Harvard  Washington  " 
asked  leave  to  go  into  Boston  to  a  collation 
which  had  been  offered  them.  "  Certainly, 
young  gentlemen,"  said  the  President,  "but 
have  you  engaged  any  one  to  bring  home 
your  muskets  ?  "  —  the  College  being  respon- 
sible for  these  weapons,  which  belonged  to 
the  State.  Again,  when  a  student  came  with 
a  physician's  certificate,  and  asked  leave  of 
absence,  K.  granted  it  at  once,  and  then 
added,  u  By  the  way,  Mr.   ,  persons  in- 
terested in  the  relation  which  exists  between 
states  of  the  atmosphere  and  health  have  no- 
ticed a  curious  fact  in  regard  to  the  climate 
of  Cambridge,  especially  within  the  College 
limits,  —  the  very  small  number  of  deaths  in 
proportion  to  the  cases  of  dangerous  illness." 
This  is  told  of  Judge  W.,  himself  a  wit,  and 
capable  of  enjoying  the  humorous  delicacy 
of  the  reproof. 

Shall   I   take   Brahmin  Alcott's  favorite 


70  CAMBRIDGE 

word,  and  call  him  a  daemonic  man?  No, 
the  Latin  genius  is  quite  old-fashioned  enough 
for  me,  means  the  same  thing,  and  its  deriva 
tive  geniality  expresses,  moreover,  the  base 
of  K.'s  being.  How  he  suggested  cloistered 
repose,  and  quadrangles  mossy  with  centurial 
associations !  How  easy  he  was,  and  how 
without  creak  was  every  movement  of  his 
mind !  This  life  was  good  enough  for  him, 
and  the  next  not  too  good.  The  gentleman- 
like pervaded  even  his  prayers.  His  were 
not  the  manners  of  a  man  of  the  world,  nor 
of  a  man  of  the  other  world  either  ;  but  both 
met  in  him  to  balance  each  other  in  a  beau- 
tiful equilibrium.  Praying,  he  leaned  forward 
upon  the  pulpit-cushion  as  for  conversation, 
and  seemed  to  feel  himself  (without  irrever- 
ence) on  terms  of  friendly,  but  courteous, 
familiarity  with  Heaven.  The  expression  of 
his  face  was  that  of  tranquil  contentment,  and 
he  appeared  less  to  be  supplicating  expected 
mercies  than  thankful  for  those  already  found, 
—  as  if  he  were  saying  the  gratias  in  the  refec- 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO.  71 


tory  of  the  Abbey  of  Theleme.  Under  him 
flourished  the  Harvard  Washington  Corps, 
whose  gyrating  banner,  inscribed  Tarn  Marti 
quam  Mercurio  (atqui  magis  Lyoeo  should  have 
been  added),  on  the  evening  of  training-days, 
was  an  accurate  dynamometer  of  Willard's 
punch  or  Porter's  flip.  It  was  they  who,  af- 
ter being  royally  entertained  by  a  maiden 
lady  of  the  towrn,  entered  in  their  orderly  book 
a  vote  that  Miss  Blank  was  a  gentleman,  I 
see  them  now,  returning  from  the  imminent 
deadly  breach  of  the  law  of  Rechab,  unable 
to  form  other  than  the  serpentine  line  of 
beauty,  while  their  officers,  brotherly  rather 
than  imperious,  instead  of  reprimanding,  tear- 
fully embraced  the  more  eccentric  wanderers 
from  military  precision.  Under  him  the  Med. 
Facs.  took  their  equal  place  among  the  learned 
societies  of  Europe,  numbering  among  their 
grateful  honorary  members  Alexander,  Em- 
peror of  all  the  Russias,  who  (if  College  le- 
gends may  be  trusted)  sent  them  in  return 
for  their  diploma  a  gift  of  medals  confiscated 


72 


CAMBRIDGE 


by  the  authorities.  Under  him  the  College 
fire-engine  was  vigilant  and  active  in  suppress- 
ing any  tendency  to  spontaneous  combustion 
among  the  Freshmen,  or  rushed  wildly  to  im- 
aginary conflagrations,  generally  in  a  direc- 
tion where  punch  was  to  be  had.  All  these 
useful  conductors  for  the  natural  electricity 
of  youth,  dispersing  it  or  turning  it  harmlessly 
into  the  earth,  are  taken  away  now,  —  wisely 
or  not,  is  questionable. 

An  academic  town,  in  whose  atmosphere 
there  is  always  something  antiseptic,  seems 
naturally  to  draw  to  itself  certain  varieties 
and  to  preserve  certain  humors  (in  the  Ben 
Jonsonian  sense)  of  character,  —  men  who 
come  not  to  study  so  much  as  to  be  studied. 
At  the  head-quarters  of  Washington  once, 
and  now  of  the  Muses,  lived  C  ,  but  be- 
fore the  date  of  these  recollections.  Here  for 
seven  years  (as  the  law  was  then)  he  made 
his  house  his  castle,  sunning  himself  in  his 
elbow-chair  at  the  front-door,  on  that  seventh 
day,  secure  from  every  arrest  but  Death's. 


7 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO.      *  73 


Here  long  survived  him  his  turban ed  widow, 
studious  only  of  Spinoza,  and  refusing  to 
molest  the  canker-worms  that  annually  dis- 
leaved  her  elms,  because  we  were  all  vermic- 
ular alike.  She  had  been  a  famous  beauty 
once,  but  the  canker  years  had  left  her  leaf- 
less, too ;  and  I  used  to  wonder,  as  I  saw  her 
sitting  always  alone  at  her  accustomed  window, 
whether  she  were  ever  visited  by  the  reproach- 
ful shade  of  him  who  (in  spite  of  Rosalind) 
died  broken-hearted  for  her  in  her  radiant 
youth. 

And  this  reminds  me  of  J.  F.,  who,  also 
crossed  in  love,  allowed  no  mortal  eye  to  be- 
hold his  face  for  many  years.  The  eremitic 
instinct  is  not  peculiar  to  the  Thebais,  as  many 
i  New  England  village  can  testify ;  and  it 
is  worthy  of  consideration  that  the  Romish 
Church  has  not  forgotten  this  among  her  other 
points  of  intimate  contact  with  human  na- 
ture. F.  became  purely  vespertinal,  never 
stirring  abroad  till  after  dark.  He  occupied 
two  rooms,  migrating  from  one  to  the  other, 

4 


74 


CAMBRIDGE 


as  the  necessities  of  housewifery  demanded, 
thus  shunning  all  sight  of  womankind,  and  be- 
ing practically  more  solitary  in  his  dual  apart- 
ment than  Montaigne's  Dean  of  St.  Hilaire  in 
his  single  one.  When  it  was  requisite  that  he 
should  put  his  signature  to  any  legal  instru- 
ment, (for  lie  was  an  anchorite  of  ample 
means,)  he  wrapped  himself  in  a  blanket,  al- 
lowing nothing  to  be  seen  but  the  hand  wrhich 
acted  as  scribe.  What  impressed  us  boys  more 
than  anything  else  was  the  rumor  that  he  had 
suffered  his  beard  to  grow,  —  such  an  anti- 
Sheffieldism  being  almost  unheard  of  in  those 
days,  and  the  peculiar  ornament  of  man  being 
associated  in  our  minds  with  nothing  more  re- 
cent than  the  patriarchs  and  apostles,  whose 
effigies  we  were  obliged  to  solace  ourselves 
with  weekly  in  the  Family  Bible.  He  came 
out  of  his  oysterhood  at  last,  and  I  knew  him 
well,  a  kind-hearted  man,  who  gave  annual 
sleigh-rides  to  the  town-paupers,  and  supplied 
the  poor  children  with  school-books.  His  fa- 
vorite topic  of  conversation  was  Eternity,  and. 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO.  75 


like  many  other  worthy  persons,  he  used  to 
fancy  that  meaning  was  an  affair  of  aggrega- 
tion, and  that  he  doubled  the  intensity  of  what 
he  said  by  the  sole  aid  of  the  multiplication- 
table.  "  Eternity  !  "  he  used  to  say,  "  it  is  not 
a  day ;  it  is  not  a  year ;  it  is  not  a  hundred 
years  ;  it  is  not  a  thousand  years  ;  it  is  not  a 
million  years ;  no,  sir,"  (the  sir  being  thrown 
in  to  recall  wandering  attention,)  "it  is  not 
ten  million  years !  "  and  so  on,  his  enthusiasm 
becoming  a  mere  frenzy  when  he  got  among 
his  sextillions,  till  I  sometimes  wished  he  had 
continued  in  retirement.  He  used  to  sit  at 
the  open  window  during  thunder-storms,  and 
had  a  Grecian  feeling  about  death  by  light- 
ning. In  a  certain  sense  he  had  his  desire, 
for  he  died  suddenly,  —  not  by  fire  from 
heaven,  but  by  the  red  flash  of  apoplexy, 
leaving  his  whole  estate  to  charitable  uses. 

If  K.  were  out  of  place  as  President,  that 
was  not  P.  as  Greek  Professor.  Who  that 
ever  saw  him  can  forget  him,  in  his  old  age, 
like  a  lusty  winter,  frosty  but  kindly,  with 


76 


CAMBRIDGE 


great  silver  spectacles  of  the  heroic  period, 
such  as  scarce  twelve  noses  of  these  degen- 
erate days  could  bear?  He  was  a  natural 
celibate,  not  dwelling  "  like  the  fly  in  the 
heart  of  the  apple,"  but  like  a  lonely  bee 
rather,  absconding  himself  in  Hymettian  flow- 
ers, incapable  of  matrimony  as  a  solitary  palm- 
tree.  There  was,  to  be  sure,  a  tradition  of 
youthful  disappointment,  and  a  touching  story 
which  L.  told  me  perhaps  confirms  it.  When 

Mrs.  died,  a  carriage  with  blinds  drawn 

followed  the  funeral  train  at  some  distance, 
and,  when  the  coflin  had  been  lowered  into 
the  grave,  drove  hastily  away  to  escape  that 
saddest  of  earthly  sounds,  the  first  rattle  of 
earth  upon  the  lid.  It  was  afterward  known 
that  the  carriage  held  a  single  mourner,  — 
our  grim  and  undemonstrative  Professor.  Yet 
I  cannot  bring  myself  to  suppose  him  sus- 
ceptible to  any  tender  passion  after  that  sin- 
gle lapse  in  the  immaturity  of  reason.  He 
might  have  joined  the  Abderites  in  singing 
their  mad  chorus  from  the  Andromeda  ;  but 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO.  77 


it  would  have  been  in  deference  to  the  lan- 
guage merely,  and  with  a  silent  protest  against 
the  sentiment.  I  fancy  him  arranging  his 
scrupulous  toilet,  not  for  Amaryllis  or  Nesera, 
but,  like  Machiavelli,  for  the  society  of  his 
beloved  classics.  His  ears  had  needed  no 
prophylactic  wax  to  pass  the  Sirens'  isle  ;  nay, 
he  would  have  kept  them  the  wider  open, 
studious  of  the  dialect  in  which  they  sang, 
and  perhaps  triumphantly  detecting  the  JEolic 
digamma  in  their  lay.  A  thoroughly  single 
man,  single-minded,  single-hearted,  button- 
ing over  his  single  heart  a  single-breasted 
surtout,  and  wearing  always  a  hat  of  a  sin- 
gle fashion,  —  did  he  in  secret  regard  the 
dual  number  of  his  favorite  language  as  a 
weakness?  The  son  of  an  officer  of  distinc- 
tion in  the  Revolutionary  War,  he  mounted 
the  pulpit  with  the  erect  port  of  a  soldier, 
and  carried  his  cane  more  in  the  fashion  of 
a  weapon  than  a  staff,  but  with  the  point 
lowered,  in  token  of  surrender  to  the  peace- 
ful proprieties  of  his  calling.    Yet  sometimes 


78 


CAMBRIDGE 


the  martial  instincts  would  burst  the  cere- 
ments of  black  coat  and  clerical  neckcloth, 
as  once,  when  the  students  had  got  into  a 
fight  upon  the  training-field,  and  the  licen- 
tious soldiery,  furious  with  rum,  had  driven 
them  at  point  of  bayonet  to  the  College  gates, 
and  even  threatened  to  lift  their  arms  against 
the  Muses'  bower.  Then,  like  Major  GofFe 
at  Deerfield,  suddenly  appeared  the  gray- 
haired  P.,  all  his  father  resurgent  in  him,  and 
shouted  :  "  Now,  my  lads,  stand  your  ground, 
you  're  in  the  right  now !  Don't  let  one  of 
them  set  foot  within  the  College  grounds ! " 
Thus  he  allowed  arms  to  get  the  better  of 
the  toga;  but  raised  it,  like  the  Prophet's 
breeches,  into  a  banner,  and  carefully  ushered 
resistance  with  a  preamble  of  infringed  right. 
Fidelity  was  his  strong  characteristic,  and 
burned  equably  in  him  through  a  life  of  eighty- 
three  years.  He  drilled  himself  till  inflexible 
habit  stood  sentinel  before  all  those  postern- 
weaknesses  which  temperament  leaves  un- 
bolted to  temptation.    A  lover  of  the  scholar's 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO.  79 

herb,  yet  loving  freedom  more,  and  knowing 
that  the  animal  appetites  ever  hold  one  hand 
behind  them  for  Satan  to  drop  a  bribe  in,  he 
would  never  have  two  cigars  in  his  house  at 
once,  but  walked  every  day  to  the  shop  to 
fetch  his  single  diurnal  solace.  Nor  would 
he  trust  himself  with  two  on  Saturdays,  pre- 
ferring (since  he  could  not  violate  the  Sab- 
bath even  by  that  infinitesimal  traffic)  to 
depend  on  Providential  ravens,  which  were 
seldom  wanting  in  the  shape  of  some  black- 
coated  friend  who  knew  his  need,  and  honored 
the  scruple  that  occasioned  it.  He  was  faith- 
ful, also,  to  his  old  hats,  in  which  appeared 
the  constant  service  of  the  antique  world,  and 
which  he  preserved  forever,  piled  like  a  black 
pagoda  under  his  dressing-table.  No  scare- 
crow was  ever  the  residuary  legatee  of  his 
beavers,  though  one  of  them  in  any  of  the 
neighboring  peach-orchards  would  have  been 
sovereign  against  an  attack  of  Freshmen.  He 
wore  them  all  in  turn,  getting  through  all  in 
the  course  of  the  year,  like  the  sun  through 


80 


CAMBRIDGE 


the  signs  of  the  zodiac,  modulating  them  ac- 
cording to  seasons  and  celestial  phenomena, 
so  that  never  was  spider-web  or  chickweed 
so  sensitive  a  weather-gauge  as  they.  Nor 
did  his  political  party  find  him  less  loyal. 
Taking  all  the  tickets,  he  would  seat  himself 
apart,  and  carefully  compare  them  with  the 
list  of  regular  nominations  as  printed  in  his 
Daily  Advertiser,  before  he  dropped  his  ballot 
in  the  box.  In  less  ambitious  moments,  it 
almost  seems  to  me  that  I  would  rather  have 
had  that  slow,  conscientious  vote  of  P.'s 
alone,  than  to  have  been  chosen  Alderman 
of  the  Ward! 

If  you  had  walked  to  what  was  then  Sweet 
Auburn  by  the  pleasant  Old  Road,  on  some 
June  morning  thirty  years  ago,  you  would 
very  likely  have  met  two  other  characteristic 
persons,  both  phantasmagoric  now,  and  be- 
longing to  the  past.  Fifty  years  earlier,  the 
scarlet-coated,  rapiered  figures  of  Vassall, 
Lechmere,  Oliver,  and  Brattle  creaked  up 
and  down  there  on  red-heeled  shoes,  lifting 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO.  81 


the  ceremonious  three-cornered  hat,  and  offer- 
ing the  fugacious  hospitalities  of  the  snuff-box. 
They  are  all  shadowy  alike  now,  not  one  of 
your  Etruscan  Lucumos  or  Roman  Consuls 
more  so,  my  dear  Storg.  First  is  W.,  his 
queue  slender  and  tapering,  like  the  tail  of  a 
violet  crab,  held  out  horizontally  by  the  high 
collar  of  his  shepherd's-gray  overcoat,  whose 
style  was  of  the  latest  when  he  studied  at 
Leyden  in  his  hot  youth.  The  age  of  cheap 
clothes  sees  no  more  of  those  faithful  old  gar- 
ments, as  proper  to  their  wearers  and  as 
distinctive  as  the  barks  of  trees,  and  by  long 
use  interpenetrated  with  their  very  nature. 
Nor  do  we  see  so  many  Humors  (still  in  the 
old  sense)  now  that  every  man's  soul  belongs 
to  the  Public,  as  when  social  distinctions  were 
more  marked,  and  men  felt  that  their  person- 
alities were  their  castles,  in  which  they  could 
intrench  themselves  against  the  world.  Nowr- 
a-days  men  are  shy  of  letting  their  true  selves 
be  seen,  as  if  in  some  former  life  they  had 
committed  a  crime,  and  were  all  the  time 

4#  F 


82 


CAMBRIDGE 


afraid  of  discovery  and  arrest  in  this.  For* 
merly  they  used  to  insist  on  your  giving  the 
wall  to  their  peculiarities,  and  you  may  still 
find  examples  of  it  in  the  parson  or  the  doctor 
of  retired  villages.  One  of  W.'s  oddities  was 
touching.  A  little  brook  used  to  run  across 
the  street,  and  the  sidewalk  was  carried  over  it 
by  a  broad  stone.  Of  course  there  is  no  brook 
now.  What  use  did  that  little  glimpse  of  a 
ripple  serve,  where  the  children  used  to  launch 
their  chip  fleets?  W.,  in  going  over  this  stone, 
which  gave  a  hollow  resonance  to  the  tread, 
had  a  trick  of  striking  upon  it  three  times 
with  his  cane,  and  muttering,  "  Tom,  Tom, 
Tom ! "  I  used  to  think  he  was  only  mimick- 
ing with  his  voice  the  sound  of  the  blows,  and 
possibly  it  was  that  sound  which  suggested  his 
thought,  for  he  was  remembering  a  favorite 
nephew,  prematurely  dead.  Perhaps  Tom  had 
sailed  his  boats  there ;  perhaps  the  reverbera- 
tion under  the  old  man's  foot  hinted  at  the 
hollo wness  of  life  ;  perhaps  the  fleeting  eddies 
of  the  water  brought  to  mind  the  fugaces  cm« 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO.  83 

nos.  W.,  like  P.,  wore  amazing  spectacles, 
fit  to  transmit  no  smaller  image  than  the  page 
of  mightiest  folios  of  Dioscorides  or  Hercules 
de  Saxonia,  and  rising  full-disked  upon  the 
beholder  like  those  prodigies  of  two  moons 
at  once,  portending  change  to  monarchs.  The 
great  collar  disallowing  any  independent  rota- 
tion of  the  head,  I  remember  he  used  to  turn 
his  whole  person  in  order  to  bring  their  foci 
to  bear  upon  an  object.  One  can  fancy  that 
terrified  Nature  would  have  yielded  up  her 
secrets  at  once,  without  cross-examination,  at 
their  first  glare.  Through  them  he  had  gazed 
fondly  into  the  great  mare's-nest  of  Junius, 
publishing  his  observations  upon  the  eggs 
found  therein  in  a  tall  octavo.  It  was  he 
who  introduced  vaccination  to  this  Western 
World.  Malicious  persons  disputing  his  claim 
to  this  distinction,  he  published  this  advertise™ 
ment :  "  Lost,  a  gold  snuff-box,  with  the  in- 
scription, 4  The  Jenner  of  the  Old  World  to 
the  Jenner  of  the  New.'  Whoever  shall  re- 
turn the  same  to  Dr.   shall  be  suitably 

\ 


84 


CAMBRIDGE 


rewarded."  It  was  never  returned.  Would 
the  search  after  it  have  been  as  fruitless  as 
that  of  the  alchemist  after  his  equally  imagi- 
nary gold  ?  Malicious  persons  persisted  in 
believing  the  box  as  visionary  as  the  claim 
it  was  meant  to  buttress  with  a  semblance  of 
reality.  He  used  to  stop  and  say  goqd  morn- 
ing kindly,  and  pat  the  shoulder  of  the  blush- 
ing school-boy  who  now,  with  the  fierce  snow- 
storm wildering  without,  sits  and  remembers 
sadly  those  old  meetings  and  partings  in  the 
June  sunshine. 

Then  there  was  S.,  whose  resounding  "  Haw, 
haw,  haw !  by  George  !  "  positively  enlarged 
the  income  of  every  dweller  in  Cambridge. 
In  downright,  honest  good  cheer  and  good 
neighborhood,  it  was  worth  five  hundred  a 
year  to  every  one  of  us.  Its  jovial  thunders 
cleared  the  mental  air  of  every  sulky  cloud. 
Perpetual  childhood  dwelt  in  him,  the  child- 
hood of  his  native  Southern  France,  and  its 
fixed  air  was  all  the  time  bubbling  up  and 
sparkling  and  winking  in  his  eyes.    It  seemed 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO  85 


as  if  his  placid  old  face  were  only  a  mask 
behind  which  a  merry  Cupid  had  ambushed 
himself,  peeping  out  all  the  while,  and  ready 
to  drop  it  when  the  play  grew  tiresome. 
Every  word  he  uttered  seemed  to  be  hilarious, 
no  matter  what  the  occasion.  If  he  were  sick, 
and  you  visited  him,  if  he  had  met  with  a 
misfortune,  (and  there  are  few  men  so  wise 
that  they  can  look  even  at  the  back  of  a  re- 
tiring sorrow  with  composure,)  it  was  all  one ; 
his  great  laugh  went  off  as  if  it  were  set  like 
an  alarm-clock,  to  run  down,  whether  he 
would  or  no,  at  a  certain  nick.  Even  after 
an  ordinary  Grood  morning !  (especially  if  to 
an  old  pupil,  and  in  French,)  the  wonderful 
Haw,  haw,  haw!  by  George!  would  burst 
upon  you  unexpectedly,  like  a  salute  of  artil- 
lery on  some  holiday  which  you  had  forgotten. 
Everything  was  a  joke  to  him,  —  that  the  oath 
of  allegiance  had  been  administered  to  him 
by  your  grandfather,  —  that  he  had  taught 
Prescott  his  first  Spanish  (of  which  he  was 
proud),  —  no  matter  what.    Everything  came 


So 


CAMBRIDGE 


to  him  marked  by  Nature  Right  si  ' 
care,  and  he  kept  it  so.  The  world  to  him, 
as  to  all  of  us,  was  like  a  medal,  on  the  ob- 
verse of  which  is  stamped  the  image  of  Joy, 
and  on  the  reverse  that  of  Care.  S.  never 
took  the  foolish  pains  to  look  at  that  other 
side,  even  if  he  knew  its  existence  ;  much 
less  would  it  have  occurred  to  him  to  turn 
it  into  view,  and  insist  that  his  friends  should 
look  at  it  with  him.  Nor  was  this  a  mere 
outside  good-humor ;  its  source  was  deeper, 
in  a  true  Christian  kindliness  and  amenity. 
Once,  when  he  had  been  knocked  down  by  a 
tipsily-driven  sleigh,  and  was  urged  to  prose- 
cute the  offenders,  44  Xo,  no,"  he  said,  his 
wounds  still  fresh,  44 young  blood!  young  blood! 
it  must  have  its  way;  I  was  young  myself." 
Was  !  few  men  come  into  life  so  young  a*  S. 
went  out.  He  landed  in  Boston  (then  the 
front  door  of  America)  in  '93,  and,  in  honor 
of  the  ceremony,  had  his  head  powdered  afresh, 
and  put  on  a  suit  of  court-mourning  before 
he  set  foot  on  the  wharf.     My  fancy  always 


THIRTY  YEARS  AGO. 


87 


dressed  him  in  that  violet  silk,  and  his  soul 
certainly  wore  a  full  court-suit.  What  was 
there  ever  like  his  bow  ?  It  was  as  if  you  had 
received  a  decoration,  and  could  write  your- 
self gentleman  from  that  day  forth.  His  hat 
rose,  regreeting  your  own,  and,  having  sailed 
through  the  stately  curve  of  the  old  regime, 
sank  gently  back  over  that  placid  brain,  which 
harbored  no  thought  less  white  than  the  pow- 
der which  covered  it.  I  have  sometimes  im- 
agined that  there  was  a  graduated  arc  over  his 
head,  invisible  to  other  eyes  than  his,  by  which 
he  meted  out  to  each  his  rightful  share  of  cas- 
torial  consideration.  I  carry  in  my  memory 
three  exemplary  bows.  The  first  is  that  of 
an  old  beggar,  who,  already  carrying  in  his 
hand  a  white  hat,  the  gift  of  benevolence,  took 
off  the  black  one  from  his  head  also,  and  pro- 
foundly saluted  me  with  both  at  once,  giving 
me,  in  return  for  my  alms,  a  dual  benediction, 
puzzling  as  a  nod  from  Janus  Bifrons.  The 
second  I  received  from  an  old  Cardinal,  who 
was  taking  his  walk  just  outside  the  Porta  San 


88     CAMBRIDGE  THIRTY  YEARS  AGO. 

Giovanni  at  Rome.  I  paid  him  the  courtesy 
due  to  his  age  and  rank.  Forthwith  rose, 
first,  the  Hat ;  second,  the  hat  of  his  confessor ; 
third,  that  of  another  priest  who  attended 
him ;  fourth,  the  fringed  cocked-hat  of  his 
coachman ;  fifth  and  sixth,  the  ditto,  ditto, 
of  his  two  footmen.  Here  was  an  invest- 
ment, indeed  ;  six  hundred  per  cent  interest 
on  a  single  bow  !  The  third  bow,  worthy  to 
be  noted  in  one's  almanac  among  the  other 
mirabilia,  was  that  of  S.,  in  which  courtesy 
had  mounted  to  the  last  round  of  her  ladder, 
—  and  tried  to  draw  it  up  after  her. 

But  the  genial  veteran  is  gone  even  while 
I  am  writing  this,  and  I  will  play  Old  Mor- 
tality no  longer.  Wandering  among  these 
recent  graves,  my  dear  friend,  we  may  chance 

upon  ;  but  no,  I  will  not  end  my  sen 

tence.    I  bid  you  heartily  farewell ! 


A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL. 


ADDRESSED  TO  THE  EDELMANN  STORG  AT  THE 
BAGNI  DI  LUCCA. 

THURSDAY,  Uth  August.  — I  knew  as 
little  yesterday  of  the  interior  of  Maine 
as  the  least  penetrating  person  knows  of  the 
inside  of  that  great  social  millstone  which, 
driven  by  the  river  Time,  sets  imperatively 
agoing  the  several  wheels  of  our  individual 
activities.  Born  while  Maine  was  still  a 
province  of  native  Massachusetts,  I  was  as 
much  a  foreigner  to  it  as  yourself,  my  dear 
Storg.  I  had  seen  many  lakes,  ranging  from 
that  of  Virgil's  Cumsean  to  that  of  Scott's 
Caledonian  Lady ;  but  Moosehead,  within  two 
days  of  me,  had  never  enjoyed  the  profit  of 
being  mirrored  in  my  retina.  At  the  sound 
of  the  name,  no  reminiscential  atoms  (ac- 

f 


90  A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL, 


cording  to  Kenelm  Digby's  Theory  of  Asso- 
ciation, —  as  good  as  any)  stirred  and  mar- 
shalled themselves  in  my  brain.  The  truth 
is,  we  think  lightly  of  Nature's  penny  shows, 
and  estimate  what  we  see  by  the  cost  of 
the  ticket.  Empedocles  gave  his  life  for  a 
pit-entrance  to  JEtna,  and  no  doubt  found 
his  account  in  it.  Accordingly,  the  clean 
face  of  Cousin  Bull  is  imaged  patronizingly 
in  Lake  George,  and  Loch  Lomond  glass- 
es the  hurried  countenance  of  Jonathan, 
diving  deeper  in  the  streams  of  European 
association  (and  coming  up  drier)  than  any 
other  man.  Or  is  the  cause  of  our  not  car- 
ing to  see  what  is  equally  within  the  reach 
of  all  our  neighbors  to  be  sought  in  that  aris- 
tocratic principle  so  deeply  implanted  in  hu- 
man nature  ?  I  knew  a  pauper  graduate  who 
always  borrowed  a  black  coat,  and  came  to 
*eat  the  Commencement  dinner,  —  not  that  it 
was  better  than  the  one  which  daily  graced 
the  board  of  the  public  institution  in  which 
tie  hibernated  (so  to  speak)  during  the  other 


A  MOOSE  HE  AD  JOURNAL.  91 


three  hundred  and  sixty-four  days  of  the  year, 
save  in  this  one  particular,  that  none  of  his 
eleemosynary  fellow-commoners  could  eat  it. 
If  there  are  unhappy  men  who  wish  that  they 
were  as  the  Babe  Unborn,  there  are  more 
who  would  aspire  to  the  lonely  distinction 
of  being  that  other  figurative  personage,  the 
Oldest  Inhabitant.  You  remember  the  charm- 
ing irresolution  of  our  dear  Esthwaite,  (like 
Macheath  between  his  two  doxies,)  divided 
between  his  theory  that  he  is  under  thirty, 
and  his  pride  at  being  the  only  one  of  us  who 
witnessed  the  September  gale  and  the  rejoi- 
cings at  the  Peace  ?  Nineteen  years  ago  I 
was  walking  through  the  Franconia  Notch, 
and  stopped  to  chat  with  a  hermit,  who  fed 
with  gradual  logs  the  unwearied  teeth  of  a 
saw-mill.  As  the  panting  steel  slit  off  the 
slabs  of  the  log,  so  did  the  less  willing  machine 
of  talk,  acquiring  a  steadier  up-and-down  mo- 
rion, pare  away  that  outward  bark  of  conver- 
sation which  protects  the  core,  and  which,  like 
other  bark,  has  naturally  most  to  do  with  the 


92  A  MOOSE  HEAD  JOURNAL. 


weather,  the  season,  and  the  heat  of  the  day. 
At  length  I  asked  him  the  best  point  of  view 
for  the  Old  Man  of  the  Mountain. 

"  Dunno,  —  never  see  it." 

Too  young  and  too  happy  either  to  feel  or 
affect  the  Juvenalian  indifference,  I  was  sin- 
cerely astonished,  and  I  expressed  it. 

The  log-compelling  man  attempted  no  justi- 
fication, but  after  a  little  asked,  "  Come  from 
Bawsn  ?  " 

"  Yes  "  (with  peninsular  pride). 

"  Goodie  to  see  in  the  vycinity  o'  Bawsn." 

u  O  yes  !  "  I  said,  and  I  thought,  —  see 
Boston  and  die !  see  the  State-Houses,  old  and 
new,  the  caterpillar  wooden  bridges  crawling 
with  innumerable  legs  across  the  flats  of 
Charles  ;  see  the  Common,  —  largest  park, 
doubtless,  in  the  world,  —  with  its  files  of 
trees  planted  as  if  by  a  drill-sergeant,  and 
fchen  for  your  nunc  dimittis! 

"  I  should  like,  'awl,  I  should  like  to  stan 
on  Bunker  Hill.  You  ?ve  ben  there  offen, 
likely  ?  " 


• 


A  MOOSE  HE  AD  JOURNAL.  93 


"N — o — o,"  unwillingly,  seeing  the  little 
end  of  the  horn  in  clear  vision  at  the  termi- 
nus of  this  Socratic  perspective. 

u  'Awl,  my  young  frien',  you 've  larnecl 
neow  thet  wut  a  man  kin  see  any  day  for 
nawthin',  childern  half  price,  he  never  doos 
see.    Nawthin'  pay,  nawthin'  vally." 

With  this  modern  instance  of  a  wise  saw, 
I  departed,  deeply  revolving  these  things  with 
myself,  and  convinced  that,  whatever  the  ratio 
of  population,  the  average  amount  of  human 
nature  to  the  square  mile  is  the  same  the 
world  over.  I  thought  of  it  when  I  saw 
people  upon  the  Pincian  wondering  at  the 
Alchemist  sun,  as  if  he  never  burned  the 
leaden  clouds  to  gold  in  sight  of  Charles 
Street.  I  thought  of  it  when  I  found  eyes  first 
discovering  at  Mont  Blanc  how  beautiful  snow 
was.  As  I  walked  on,  I  said  to  myself,  There 
is  one  exception,  wise  hermit, — it  is  just  these 
gratis  pictures  which  the  poet  puts  in  his 
show-box,  and  which  we  all  gladly  pay  Words- 
worth and  the  rest  for  a  peep  at.    The  di- 


94  A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL. 


vine  faculty  is  to  see  what  everybody  can 
look  at. 

While  every  well-informed  man  in  Europe, 
from  the  barber  down  to  the  diplomatist,  has 
his  view  of  the  Eastern  Question,  why  should 
I  not  go  personally  down  East  and  see  for 
myself?  Why  not,  like  Tancred,  attempt 
my  own  solution  of  the  Mystery  of  the  Ori- 
ent, —  doubly  mysterious  when  you  begin  the 
two  words  with  capitals  ?  You  know  my  way 
of  doing  things,  to  let  them  simmer  in  my 
mind  gently  for  months,  and  at  last  do  them 
impromptu  in  a  kind  of  desperation,  driven  by 
the  Eumenides  of  unfulfilled  purpose.  So, 
after  talking  about  Moosehead  till  nobody  be- 
lieved me  capable  of  going  thither,  I  found 
myself  at  the  Eastern  Railway  station.  The 
only  event  of  the  journey  hither  (I  am  now 
at  Waterville)  was  a  boy  hawking  exhilarat- 
ingly  the  last  great  railroad  smash,  —  thirteen 
lives  lost,  —  and  no  doubt  devoutly  wishing 
there  had  been  fifty.  This  having  a  mercan- 
tile interest  in  horrors,  holding  stock,  as  it 


A  MOOSE  HE  AD  JOURNAL.  95 


were,  in  murder,  misfortune,  and  pestilence, 
must  have  an  odd  effect  on  the  human  mind. 
The  birds  of  ill-omen,  at  whose  sombre  flight 
the  rest  of  the  world  turn  pale,  are  the  ravens 
which  bring:  food  to  this  little  outcast  in  the 
wilderness.  If  this  lad  give  thanks  for  daily 
bread,  it  would  be  curious  to  inquire  what 
that  phrase  represents  to  his  understanding. 
If  there  ever  be  a  plum  in  it,  it  is  Sin  or 
Death  that  puts  it  in.  Other  details  of  my 
dreadful  ride  I  will  spare  you.  Suffice  it  that 
I  arrived  here  in  safety,  —  in  complexion  like 
an  Ethiopian  serenader  half  got-up,  and  so 
broiled  and  peppered  that  I  was  more  like 
a  devilled  kidney  than  anything  else  I  can 
think  of. 

10  p.  m.  —  The  civil  landlord  and  neat 
chamber  at  the  "Elmwood  House  "  were  very 
grateful,  and  after  tea  I  set  forth  to  explore 
the  town.  It  has  a  good  chance  of  being 
pretty ;  but,  like  most  American  towns,  it  is 
in  a  hobbledehoy  age,  growing  yet,  and  one 
cannot  tell  what  may  happen.    A  child  with 

\ 


96  A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL. 

great  promise  of  beauty  is  often  spoiled  by  its 
second  teeth.  There  is  something  agreeable 
in  the  sense  of  completeness  which  a  walled 
town  gives  one.  It  is  entire,  like  a  crystal,  — 
a  work  which  man  has  succeeded  in  finishing. 
I  think  the  human  mind  pines  more  or  less 
where  everything  is  new,  and  is  better  for  a 
diet  of  stale  bread.  The  number  of  Ameri- 
cans who  visit  the  Old  World  is  beginning 
to  afford  matter  of  speculation  to  observant 
Europeans,  and  the  deep  inspirations  with 
which  they  breathe  the  air  of  antiquity,  as 
if  their  mental  lungs  had  been  starved  with 
too  thin  an  atmosphere.  For  my  own  part, 
I  never  saw  a  house  which  I  thought  old 
enough  to  be  torn  down.  It  is  too  like  that 
Scythian  fashion  of  knocking  old  people  on 
the  head.  I  cannot  help  thinking  that  the 
indefinable  something  which  we  call  character 
is  cumulative,  —  that  the  influence  of  the  same 
climate,  scenery,  and  associations  for  several 
generations  is  necessary  to  its  gathering  head, 
and  that  the  process  is  disturbed  by  con 


A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL.  97 

tmual  change  of  place.  The  American  is 
nomadic  in  religion,  in  ideas,  in  morals,  and 
leaves  his  faith  and  opinions  with  as  much 
indifference  as  the  house  in  which  he  was 
born.  However,  we  need  not  bother :  Na- 
ture takes  care  not  to  leave  out  of  the  great 
heart  of  society  either  of  its  two  ventricles 
of  hold-back  and  go-ahead. 

It  seems  as  if  every  considerable  American 
town  must  have  its  one  specimen  of  every- 
thing, and  so  there  is  a  college  in  Waterville, 
the  buildings  of  which  are  three  in  number, 
of  brick,  and  quite  up  to  the  average  ugliness 
which  seems  essential  in  edifices  of  this  de- 
scription. Unhappily,  they  do  not  reach  that 
extreme  of  ugliness  where  it  and  beauty  come 
together  in  the  clasp  of  fascination.  We  erect 
handsomer  factories  for  cottons,  woollens,  and 
steam-engines,  than  for  doctors,  lawyers,  and 
parsons.  The  truth  is,  that,  till  our  struggle 
with  nature  is  over,  till  this  shaggy  hemi- 
sphere is  tamed  and  subjugated,  the  workshop 
will  be  the  college  whose  degrees  will  be  most 


98  A  MOOSE  HE  AD  JOURNAL. 

Valued.  Moreover,  steam  has  made  travel  so 
easy  that  the  great  university  of  the  world  is 
open  to  all  comers,  and  the  old  cloister  sys- 
tem is  falling  astern.  Perhaps  it  is  only  the 
more  needed,  and,  were  I  rich,  I  should  like 
to  found  a  few  lazyships  in  my  Alma  Mater 
as  a  kind  of  counterpoise.  The  Anglo-Saxon 
race  has  accepted  the  primal  curse  as  a  bless- 
ing, has  deified  work,  and  would  not  have 
thanked  Adam  for  abstaining  from  the  apple. 
They  would  have  dammed  the  four  rivers 
of  Paradise,  substituted  cotton  for  fig-leaves 
among  the  antediluvian  populations,  and  com- 
mended man's  first  disobedience  as  a  wise 
measure  of  political  economy.  But  to  return 
to  our  college.  We  cannot  have  fine  build- 
ings till  we  are  less  in  a  hurry.  We  snatch 
an  education  like  a  meal  at  a  railroad-station. 
Just  in  time  to  make  us  dyspeptic,  the  whistle 
shrieks,  and  we  must  rush,  or  lose  our  places 
in  the  great  train  of  life.  Yet  noble  architec- 
ture is  one  element  of  patriotism,  and  an  emi- 
nent one  of  culture,  the  finer  portions  of 


A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL.  99 


which  are  taken  in  by  unconscious  absorption 
through  the  pores  of  the  mind  from  the  sur- 
rounding atmosphere.  I  suppose  we  must 
wait,  for  we  are  a  great  bivouac  as  yet  rather 
than  a  nation,  —  on  the  march  from  the  At- 
lantic to  the  Pacific,  — and  pitch  tents  instead 
of  building  houses.  Our  very  villages  seem 
to  be  in  motion,  following  westward  the  be- 
witching music  of  some  Pied  Piper  of  Hame- 
lin.  We  still  feel  the  great  push  toward  sun- 
down given  to  the  peoples  somewhere  in  the 
gray  dawn  of  history.  The  cliff-swallow  alone 
of  all  animated  nature  emigrates  eastward. 

Friday,  12th.  —  The  coach  leaves  Water- 
ville  at  five  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  one 
must  breakfast  in  the  dark  at  a  quarter  past 
four,  because  a  train  starts  at  twenty  minutes 
before  five,  —  the  passengers  by  both  convey- 
ances being  pastured  gregariously.  So  one 
must  be  up  at  half  past  three.  The  primary 
geological  formations  contain  no  trace  of  man, 
and  it  seems  to  me  that  these  eocene  periods 
of  the  day  are  not  fitted  for  sustaining  the 
{ 


100        A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL. 

human  forms  of  life.  One  of  the  Fathers  held 
that  the  sun  was  created  to  be  worshipped  at 
his  rising  by  the  Gentiles.  The  more  reason 
that  Christians  (except,  perhaps,  early  Chris- 
tians) should  abstain  from  these  heathenish 
ceremonials.  As  one  arriving  by  an  early 
train  is  welcomed  by  a  drowsy  maid  with  the 
sleep  scarce  brushed  out  of  her  hair,  and 
finds  empty  grates  and  polished  mahogany, 
on  whose  arid  plains  the  pioneers  of  break- 
fast have  not  yet  encamped,  so  a  person  waked 
thus  unseasonably  is  sent  into  the  world  be- 
fore his  faculties  are  up  and  dressed  to  serve 
him.  It  might  have  been  for  this  reason  that 
my  stomach  resented  for  several  hours  a  piece 
of  fried  beefsteak  which  I  forced  upon  it,  or, 
more  properly  speaking,  a  piece  of  that  leath- 
ern conveniency  which  in  these  regions  as- 
sumes the  name.  You  will  find  it  as  hard 
to  believe,  my  dear  Storg,  as  that  quarrel 
of  the  Sorbonists,  whether  one  should  say 
zgo  amat  or  no,  that  the  use  of  the  gridiron 
is  unknown  hereabout,  and  so  near  a  river 
named  after  St.  Lawrence,  too ! 


A  MOOSEHEAD 'JOURNAL.  101 


To-day  has  been  the  hottest  day  of  the 
season,  yet  our  drive  has  not  been  unpleasant. 
For  a  considerable  distance  we  followed  the 
course  of  the  Sebasticook  River,  a  pretty 
stream  with  alternations  of  dark  brown  pools 
and  wine-colored  rapids.  On  each  side  of  the 
road  the  land  had  been  cleared,  and  little 
one-story  farm-houses  were  scattered  at  inter- 
vals. But  the  stumps  still  held  out  in  most 
of  the  fields,  and  the  tangled  wilderness  closed 
in  behind,  striped  here  and  there  with  the 
slim  white  trunks  of  the  elm.  As  yet  only 
the  edges  of  the  great  forest  have  been  nib- 
bled away.  Sometimes  a  root-fence  stretched 
up  its  bleaching  antlers,  like  the  trophies  of 
a  giant  hunter.  Now  and  then  the  houses 
thickened  into  an  unsocial-looking  village,  and 
we  drove  up  to  the  grocery  to  leave  and  take 
a  mail-bag,  stopping  again  presently  to  water 
the  horses  at  some  pallid  little  tavern,  whose 
one  red-curtained  eye  (the  bar-room)  had 
been  put  out  by  the  inexorable  thrust  of  Maine 
Law.    Had  Shenstone  travelled  this  road,  he 


102        A  MOOSE-HEAD  JOURNAL. 


would  never  have  written  that  famous  stanza 
of  his  ;  had  Johnson,  he  would  never  have 
quoted  it.  They  are  to  real  inns  as  the  skull 
of  Yorick  to  his  face.  Where  these  villages 
occurred  at  a  distance  from  the  river,  it  was 
difficult  to  account  for  them.  On  the  river- 
bank,  a  saw-mill  or  a  tannery  served  as  a  logi- 
cal premise,  and  saved  them  from  total  incon- 
sequentiality.  As  we  trailed  along,  at  the 
rate  of  about  four  miles  an  hour,  it  was  dis- 
covered that  one  of  our  mail-bags  was  missing. 
"  Guess  somebody  '11  pick  it  up,"  said  the 
driver  coolly  ;  " 't  any  rate,  likely  there 's 
nothin'  in  it."  Who  knows  how  long  it  took 
some  Elam  D.  or  Zebulon  K.  to  compose  the 
missive  intrusted  to  that  vagrant  bag,  and 
how  much  longer  to  persuade  Pamela  Grace 
or  Sophronia  Melissa  that  it  had  really  and 
truly  been  written  ?  The  discovery  of  our 
loss  was  made  by  a  tall  man  who  sat  next  to 
me  on  the  top  of  the  coach,  every  one  of 
whose  senses  seemed  to  be  prosecuting  its 
several  investigation  as  we  went  along.  Pres- 


A  MOOSE  HE  AD  JOURNAL.  103 


ently,  sniffing  gently,  he  remarked:  " 'Pears 
to  me  's  though  I  smelt  sunthin'.  Ain't  the 
aix  het,  think  ?  "  The  driver  pulled  up,  and, 
sure  enough,  the  off  fore-wheel  was  found 
to  be  smoking.  In  three  minutes  he  had 
snatched  a  rail  from  the  fence,  made  a  lever, 
raised  the  coach,  and  taken  off  the  wheel, 
bathing  the  hot  axle  and  box  with  water  from 
the  river.  It  was  a  pretty  spot,  and  I  was 
not  sorry  to  lie  under  a  beech-tree  (Tityrus- 
like,  meditating  over  my  pipe)  and  watch  the 
operations  of  the  fire-annihilator.  I  could  not 
help  contrasting  the  ready  helpfulness  of  our 
driver,  all  of  whose  wits  were  about  him,  cur- 
rent, and  redeemable  in  the  specie  of  action  on 
emergency,  with  an  incident  of  travel  in  Italy, 
where,  under  a  somewhat  similar  stress  of  cir- 
cumstances, our  vetturino  had  nothing  for  it 
but  to  dash  his  hat  on  the  ground  and  call  on 
Sant'  Antonio,  the  Italian  Hercules. 

There  being  four  passengers  for  the  Lake, 
a  vehicle  called  a  mud-wagon  was  detailed 
Rt  Newport  for  our  accommodation.    In  this 


104 


A  MOOSE  HE  AD  JOURNAL. 


we  jolted  and  rattled  along  at  a  livelier  pace 
than  in  the  coach.  As  we  got  farther  north, 
the  country  (especially  the  hills)  gave  evi- 
dence of  longer  cultivation..  About  the  thriv- 
ing town  of  Dexter  we  saw  fine  farms  ana 
crops.  The  houses,  too,  became  prettier ; 
hop-vines  were  trained  about  the  doors,  and 
hung  their  clustering  thyrsi  over  the  open 
windows.  A  kind  of  wild  rose  (called  by 
the  country  folk  the  primrose)  and  asters  were 
planted  about  the  door-yards,  and  orchards, 
commonly  of  natural  fruit,  added  to  the  pleas- 
ant home-look.  But  everywhere  we  could 
see  that  the  war  between  the  white  man  and 
the  forest  was  still  fierce,  and  that  it  would 
be  a  long  while  yet  before  the  axe  was  buried. 
The  haying  being  over,  fires  blazed  or  smoul- 
dered against  the  stumps  in  the  fields,  and  the 
blue  smoke  widened  slowly  upward  through 
the  quiet  August  atmosphere.  It  seemed  to 
me  that  I  could  hear  a  sigh  now  and  then 
from  the  immemorial  pines,  as  they  stood 
watching  th^se  camp-fires  of  the  ine***t*yc 


A  MOOSE  HEAD  JOURNAL.  105 


invader.  Evening  set  in,  and,  as  we  crunched 
and  crawled  up  the  long  gravelly  hills,  I  some- 
times began  to  fancy  that  Nature  had  forgot- 
ten to  make  the  corresponding  descent  on 
the  other  side.  But  erelong  we  were  rush- 
ing down  at  full  speed ;  and,  inspired  by  the 
dactylic  beat  of  the  horses'  hoofs,  I  essayed 
to  repeat  the  opening  lines  of  Evangeline. 
At  the  moment  I  was  beginning,  we  plunged 
into  a  hollow,  where  the  soft  clay  had  been 
overcome  by  a  road  of  unhewn  logs.  I  got 
through  one  line  to  this  corduroy  accompani- 
ment, somewhat  as  a  country  choir  stretches 
a  short  metre  on  the  Procrustean  rack  of  a  long- 
drawn  tune.    The  result  was  like  this  :  — 

"  Thihis  ihis  thehe  fohorest  prihihimeheval ;  thehe  murhur- 
muring  pihines  hahand  thehe  hehemlohocks ! " 

At  a  quarter  past  eleven,  p.  m.,  we  reached 
Greenville,  (a  little  village  which  looks  as 
if  it  had  dripped  down  from  the  hills,  and 
settled  in  the  hollow  at  the  foot  of  the  lake,) 
Having  ^accomplished   seventy-two   miles  in 

5* 


106        A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL. 


eighteen  hours.  The  tavern  was  totally  ex- 
tinguished. The  driver  rapped  upon  the 
bar-room  window,  and  after  a  while  we  saw 
heat-lightnings  of  unsuccessful  matches  fol- 
lowed by  a  low  grumble  of  vocal  thunder, 
which  I  am  afraid  took  the  form  of  impreca- 
tion. Presently  there  was  a  great  success, 
and  the  steady  blur  of  lighted  tallow  succeeded 
the  fugitive  brilliance  of  the  pine.  A  hostler 
fumbled  the  door  open,  and  stood  staring  at 
but  not  seeing  us,  with  the  sleep  sticking  out 
all  over  him.  We  at  last  contrived  to  launch 
him,  more  like  an  insensible  missile  than  an 
intelligent  or  intelligible  being,  at  the  slum- 
bering landlord,  who  came  out  wide-awake, 
and  welcomed  us  as  so  many  half-dollars, — 
twenty-five  cents  each  for  bed,  ditto  breakfast, 
O  Shenstone,  Shenstone !  The  only  roost 
was  in  the  garret,  which  had  been  made  into 
a  single  room,  and  contained  eleven  double* 
beds,  ranged  along  the  walls.  It  was  like 
sleeping  in  a  hospital.  However,  nice  cus- 
toms curtsy  to  eigh teen-hour  rides,  and  we 
slept. 


A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL. 


107 


Saturday,  13£A.  —  This  morning  I  per- 
formed my  toilet  in  the  bar-room,  where 
there  was  an  abundant  supply  of  water,  and 
a  halo  of  interested  spectators.  After  a  suffi- 
cient breakfast,  we  embarked  on  the  little 
steamer  Moosehead,  and  were  soon  throbbing 
up  the  lake.  The  boat,  it  appeared,  had  been 
chartered  by  a  party,  this  not  being  one  of 
her  regular  trips.  Accordingly  we  were 
mulcted  in  twice  the  usual  fee,  the  philosophy 
of  which  I  could  not  understand.  However, 
it  always  comes  easier  to  us  to  comprehend 
why  we  receive  than  why  we  pay.  I  dare 
say  it  was  quite  clear  to  the  captain.  There 
were  three  or  four  clearings  on  the  western 
shore  ;  but  after  passing  these,  the  lake  be- 
came wholly  primeval,  and  looked  to  us  as  it 
did  to  the  first  adventurous  Frenchman  who 
paddled  across  it.  Sometimes  a  cleared  point 
would  be  pink  with  the  blossoming  willow- 
herb,  "  a  cheap  and  excellent  substitute"  for 
heather,  and,  like  all  such,  not  quite  so  good 
fis  the  real  thing.    On  all  sides  rose  deep-blue 


108        ^  MOOSE  HE  AD  JOURNAL 


mountains,  of  remarkably  graceful  outline, 
and  more  fortunate  than  common  in  their 
names.  There  were  the  Big  and  Little  Squaw, 
the  Spencer  and  Lily-bay  Mountains.  It  was 
debated  whether  we  saw  Katahdin  or  not,  (per- 
haps more  useful  as  an  intellectual  exercise 
than  the  assured  vision  would  have  been.)  and 
presently  Mount  Kineo  rose  abruptly  before 
us,  in  shape  not  unlike  the  island  of  Capri. 
Mountains  are  called  great  natural  features, 
and  why  they  should  not  retain  their  names 
long  enough  for  them  also  to  become  natural- 
ized, it  is  hard  to  say.  Why  should  every  new 
surveyor  rechristen  them  with  the  gubernato- 
rial patronymics  of  the  current  year  ?  They 
are  geological  noses,  and,  as  they  are  aquiline 
v\r  pug,  indicate  terrestrial  idiosyncrasies.  A 
eosmical  physiognomist,  after  a  glance  at  them, 
will  draw  no  vague  inference  as  to  the  char- 
acter of  the  country.  The  word  nose  is  no 
better  than  any  other  word  ;  but  since  the 
organ  has  got  that  name,  it  is  convenient  to 
keep  it.    Suppose  we  had  to  label  our  facia" 


I 


A  MOOSE  HEAD  JOURNAL.  109 


prominences  every  season  with  the  name  of 
our  provincial  governor,  how  should  we  like 
it  ?  If  the  old  names  have  no  other  mean- 
ing, they  have  that  of  age  ;  and,  after  all, 
meaning  is  a  plant  of  slow  growth,  as  every 
reader  of  Shakespeare  knows.  It  is  web 
enough  to  call  mountains  after  their  discover- 
ers,  for  Nature  has  a  knack  of  throwing 
doublets,  and  somehow  contrives  it  that  dis- 
coverers have  good  names.  Pike's  Peak  is 
a  curious  hit  in  this  way.  But  these  sur- 
veyors' names  have  no  natural  stick  in  them. 
They  remind  one  of  the  epithets  of  poet- 
asters, which  peel  off  like  a  badly  gummed 
postage-stamp.  The  early  settlers  did  better, 
and  there  is  something  pleasant  in  the  sound 
of  Graylock,  Saddleback,  and  Great  Hay 
stack. 

"  I  love  those  names 
j      Wherewith  the  exiled  farmer  tames 
Nature  down  to  companionship 

With  his  old  world's  more  homely  mood, 
And  strives  the  shaggy  wild  to  clip 
With  arms  of  familiar  habitude/* 

\ 


110        A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL. 

It  is  possible  that  Mount  Marcy  and  Mount 
Hitchcock  may  sound  as  well  hereafter  as 
Hellespont  and  Peloponnesus,  when  the  heroes, 
their  namesakes,  have  become  mythic  with 
antiquity.  But  that  is  to  look  forward  a  great 
way.  I  am  no  fanatic  for  Indian  nomencla- 
ture, —  the  name  of  my  native  district  having 
been  Pigsgusset,  —  but  let  us  at  least  agree 
on  names  for  ten  years. 

There  wjsre  a  couple  of  loggers  on  board, 
in  red  flannel  shirts,  and  with  rifles.  They 
were  the  first  I  had  seen,  and  I  was  interested 
in  their  appearance.  They  were  tall,  well- 
knit  men,  straight  as  Robin  Hood,  and  with 
a  quiet,  self-contained  look  that  pleased  me. 
I  fell  into  talk  with  one  of  them. 

"  Is  there  a  good  market  for  the  farmers 
here  in  the  woods  ?  "  I  asked. 

"  None  better.  They  can  sell  what  they 
raise  at  their  doors,  and  for  the  best  of  prices. 
The  lumberers  want  it  all,  and  more." 

"  It  must  be  a  lonely  life.  But  then  we  all 
nave  to  pay  more  or  less  life  for  a  living." 


A  MOOSE  HE  AD  JOURNAL.  HI 


"  Well,  it  is  lonesome.  Should  n't  like  it. 
After  all,  the  best  crop  a  man  can  raise  is  a 
good  crop  of  society.  We  don't  live  none  too 
long,  anyhow ;  and  without  society  a  fellow 
could  n't  tell  more  'n  half  the  time  whether 
he  was  alive  or  not." 

This  speech  gave  me  a  glimpse  into  the  life 
of  the  lumberers'  camp.  It  was  plain  that 
there  a  man  would  soon  find  out  how  much 
alive  he  was,  —  there  he  could  learn  to  esti- 
mate his  quality,  weighed  in  the  nicest  self- 
adjusting  balance.  The  best  arm  at  the  axe 
or  the  paddle,  the  surest  eye  for  a  road  or 
for  the  weak  point  of  a  jam,  the  steadiest  foot 
upon  the  squirming  log,  the  most  persuasive 
voice  to  the  tugging  oxen,  —  all  these  things 
are  rapidly  settled,  and  so  an  aristocracy  is 
evolved  from  this  democracy  of  the  woods, 
for  good  old  mother  Nature  speaks  Saxon 
still,  and  with  her  either  Canning  or  Ken- 
ning means  King. 

A  string  of  five  loons  was  flying  back  and 
forth  in  long,  irregular  zigzags,  uttering  at 

\ 

f         ...  v  v - 


112        A  MOO  BEHEAD  JOURNAL. 


intervals  their  wild,  tremulous  cry,  which 
always  seems  far  away,  like  the  last  faint 
pulse  of  echo  dying  among  the  hills,  and 
which  is  one  of  those  few  sounds  that,  in- 
stead of  disturbing  solitude,  only  deepen  and 
confirm  it.  On  our  inland  ponds  they  are 
usually  seen  in  pairs,  and  I  asked  if  it  were 
common  to  meet  five  together.  My  ques- 
tion was  answered  by  a  queer-looking  old 
man,  chiefly  remarkable  for  a  pair  of  enormous 
cowhide  boots,  over  which  large  blue  trousers 
of  frocking  strove  in  vain  to  crowd  them- 
selves. 

"  Wahl,  't  ain't  ushil,"  said  he,  "  and  it 's 
called  a  sign  o'  rain  comin',  that  is." 

"  Do  you  think  it  will  rain  ?  " 

With  the  caution  of  a  veteran  auspex^  he 
evaded  a  direct  reply.  "  Wahl,  they  du  say 
it 's  a  sign  o'  rain  comin',''  said  he. 

I  discovered  afterward  that  my  interlocutor 
was  Uncle  Zeb.  Formerly,  every  New  Eng- 
and  town  had  its  representative  uncle.  He 
was  not  a  pawnbroker,  but  some  elderly  man 


A  MOO  BEHEAD  JOURNAL.  113 


who,  for  want  of  more  defined  family  ties, 
had  gradually  assumed  this  avuncular  relation 
to  the  community,  inhabiting  the  border-land 
between  respectability  and  the  almshouse,  with 
no  regular  calling,  but  working  at  haying, 
wood-sawing,  whitewashing,  associated  with 
the  demise  of  pigs  and  the  ailments  of  cattle, 
and  possessing  as  much  patriotism  as  might 
be  implied  in  a  devoted  attachment  to  "  New 
England"  —  with  a  good  deal  of  sugar  and 
very  little  water  in  it.  Uncle  Zeb  was  a 
good  specimen  of  this  palaeozoic  class,  extinct 
among  us  for  the  most  part,  or  surviving,  like 
the  Dodo,  in  the  Botany  Bays  of  society.  He 
was  ready  to  contribute  (somewhat  muddily) 
to  all  general  conversation ;  but  his  chief 
topics  were  his  boots  and  the  'Boos tick  war. 
Upon  the  lowlands  and  levels  of  ordinary 
palaver  he  would  make  rapid  and  unlooked-for 
incursions  ;  but,  provision  failing,  he  would 
retreat  to  these  two  fastnesses,  whence  it  was 
impossible  to  dislodge  him,  and  to  which  he 
knew  innumerable  passes  and  short  cuts  quite 
\  * 


114        A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL. 


beyond  the  conjecture  of  common  woodcraft. 
His  mind  opened  naturally  to  these  two  sub- 
jects, like  a  book  to  some  favorite  passage. 
As  the  ear  accustoms  itself  to  any  sound  re- 
curring regularly,  such  as  the  ticking  of  a 
clock,  and,  without  a  conscious  effort  of  atten- 
tion, takes  no  impression  from  it  whatever, 
so  does  the  mind  find  a  natural  safeguard 
against  this  pendulum  species  of  discourse, 
and  performs  its  duties  in  the  parliament  by 
an  unconscious  reflex  action,  like  the  beating 
of  the  heart  or  the  movement  of  the  lungs. 
If  talk  seemed  to  be  flagging,  our  Uncle  would 
put  the  heel  of  one  boot  upon  the  toe  of  the 
other,  to  bring  it  within  point-blank  range, 
and  say,  "  Wahl,  I  stump  the  Devil  himself 
to  make  that  'ere  boot  hurt  my  foot,"  leaving 
us  in  doubt  whether  it  were  the  virtue  of 
the  foot  or  its  case  which  set  at  naught  the 
wiles  of  the  adversary  ;  or,  looking  up  sud- 
denly, he  would  exclaim,  "  Wahl,  we  eat 
%ome  beans  to  the  'Roostick  war,  I  tell  you!" 
When  his  poor  old  clay  was  wet  with  gint 


A  MOOSE  HEAD  JOURNAL. 


115 


his  thoughts  and  words  acquired  a  rank  flavor 
from  it,  as  from  too  strong  a  fertilizer.  At 
such  times,  too,  his  fancy  commonly  reverted 
to  a  pre-historic  period  of  his  life,  when  he 
singly  had  settled  all  the  surrounding  coun- 
try, subdued  the  Injuns  and  other  wild  ani- 
mals, and  named  all  the  towns. 

We  talked  of  the  winter-camps  and  the  life 
there.  "  The  best  thing  is,"  said  our  Uncle, 
"  to  hear  a  log  squeal  thru  the  snow.  Git 
a  good,  cole,  frosty  mornin',  in  Febuary  say, 
an'  take  an'  hitch  the  critters  on  to  a  log 
that  '11  scale  seven  thousan',  an'  it  '11  squeal 
as  pooty  as  an'thin'  you  ever  hearn,  I  tell 
you" 

A  pause. 

"  Lessee,  —  seen  Cal  Hutchins  lately  ?  " 
"  No." 

"  Seems  to  me 's  though  I  hed  n't  seen  Cal 
sence  the  'Roostick  war.    Wahl,"  &c,  &c. 
Another  pause. 

"  To  look  at  them  boots  you 'd  think  they 
was  too  large ;  but  kind  o'  git  your  foot  into 

\ 


116        A  MOOSE  HE  AD  JOURNAL. 

'em,  and  they  're  as  easy 's  a  glove."  (I  ob- 
served that  he  never  seemed  really  to  get  his 
foot  in,  —  there  was  always  a  qualifying  kind 
0'.)  "  Wahl,  my  foot  can  play  in  'em  like 
a  young  hedgehog." 

By  this  time  we  had  arrived  at  Kineo,  —  a 
flourishing  village  of  one  house,  the  tavern 
kept  by  'Squire  Barrows.  The  'Squire  is  a 
large,  hearty  man,  with  a  voice  as  clear  and 
strong  as  a  northwest  wind,  and  a  great  laugh 
suitable  to  it.  His  table  is  neat  and  well  sup- 
plied, and  he  wTaits  upon  it  himself  in  the  good 
old  landlordly  fashion.  One  may  be  much 
better  off  here,  to  my  thinking,  than  in  one 
of  those  gigantic  Columbaria  which  are  foisted 
upon  us  patient  Americans  for  hotels,  and 
where  one  is  packed  away  in  a  pigeon-hole 
so  near  the  heavens  that,  if  the  comet  should 
flirt  its  tail,  (no  unlikely  thing  in  the  month 
of  flies,)  one  would  be  in  danger  of  being 
brushed  away.  Here  one  does  not  pay  his 
diurnal  three  dollars  for  an  undivided  five- 
hundredth  part  of  the  pleasure  of  looking  at 


A  MOOSE  HEAD  JOURNAL.  117 


gilt  gingerbread.  Here  one's  relations  are 
with  the  monarch  himself,  and  one  is  not 
obliged  to  wait  the  slow  leisure  of  those  "  at- 
tentive clerks "  whose  praises  are  sung  by 
thankful  deadheads,  and  to  whom  the  slave 
who  pays  may  feel  as  much  gratitude  as  might 
thrill  the  heart  of  a  brown-paper  parcel  to- 
ward the  express-man  who  labels  it  and 
chucks  it  under  his  counter. 

Sunday,  14:th.  —  The  loons  were  right. 
About  midnight  it  began  to  rain  in  earnest, 
and  did  not  hold  up  till  about  ten  o'clock  this 
morning.  "  This  is  a  Maine  dew,"  said  a 
shaggy  woodman  cheerily,  as  he  shook  the 
water  out  of  his  wide-awrake,  "  if  it  don't  look 
out  sharp,  it  '11  begin  to  rain  afore  it  thinks 
0>n 't."  The  day  was  mostly  spent  within 
doors  ;  but  I  found  good  and  intelligent  so- 
ciety. We  should  have  to  be  shipwrecked  on 
Juan  Fernandez  not  to  find  men  who  knew 
more  than  we.  In  these  travelling  encounters 
one  is  thrown  upon  his  own  resources,  and  is 
worth  just  what  he  carries  about  him.  The 


118        A  MOOSE  HE  AD  JOURNAL. 


social  currency  of  home,  the  smooth-worn  coin 
which  passes  freely  among  friends  and  neigh- 
bors, is  of  no  account.  We  are  thrown  hack 
upon  the  old  system  of  barter  ;  and,  even  with 
savages,  we  bring  away  only  as  much  of  the 
wild  wealth  of  the  woods  as  we  carry  beads 
of  thought  and  experience,  strung  one  by  one 
in  painful  years,  to  pay  for  them  with.  A  use- 
ful old  jackknife  will  buy  more  than  the  dain- 
tiest Louis  Quinze  paper-folder  fresh  from 
Paris.  Perhaps  the  kind  of  intelligence  one 
gets  in  these  out-of-the-way  places  is  the  best, 
—  where  one  takes  a  fresh  man  after  break- 
fast instead  of  the  damp  morning  paper,  and 
where  the  magnetic  telegraph  of  human 
sympathy  flashes  swift  news  from  brain  to 
brain. 

Meanwhile,  at  a  pinch,  to-morrow's  weather 
can  be  discussed.  The  augury  from  the  flight 
of  birds  is  favorable,  —  the  loons  no  longer 
prophesying  rain.  The  wind  also  is  hauling 
round  to  the  right  quarter,  according  to  some, 
to  the  wrong,  if  we  are  to  believe  others. 


A  MOOSE  HE  AD  JOURNAL.  119 


Each  man  has  his  private  barometer  of  hope, 
the  mercury  in  which  is  more  or  less  sensitive, 
and  the  opinion  vibrant  with  its  rise  or  fall. 
Mine  has  an  index  which  can  be  moved  me- 
chanically. I  fixed  it  at  set  fair,  and  resigned 
myself.  I  read  an  old  volume  of  the  Patent- 
Office  Report  on  Agriculture,  and  stored  away 
a  beautiful  pile  of  facts  and  observations  for 
future  use,  which  the  current  of  occupation, 
at  its  first  freshet,  would  sweep  quietly  off  to 
blank  oblivion.  Practical  application  is  the 
only  mordant  which  will  set  things  in  the 
memory.  Study,  without  it,  is  gymnastics, 
and  not  work,  which  alone  will  get  intellectual 
bread.  One  learns  more  metaphysics  from  a 
single  temptation  than  from  all  the  philoso- 
phers. It  is  curious,  though,  how  tyrannical 
the  habit  of  reading  is,  and  what  shifts  we 
make  to  escape  thinking.  There  is  no  bore 
we  dread  being  left  alone  with  so  much  as 
our  own  minds.  I  have  seen  a  sensible  man 
study  a  stale  newspaper  in  a  country  tavern, 
and  husband  it  as  he  would  an  old  shoe  on 


120        A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL. 

a  raft  after  shipwreck.  Why  not  try  a  bit 
of  hibernation  ?  There  are  few  brains  that 
would  not  be  better  for  living  on  their  own 
fat  a  little  while.  With  these  reflections,  I, 
notwithstanding,  spent  the  afternoon  over  my 
Report.  If  our  own  experience  is  of  so  little 
use  to  us,  what  a  dolt  is  he  who  recommends 
to  man  or  nation  the  experience  of  others  ! 
Like  the  mantle  in  the  old  ballad,  it  is  always 
too  short  or  too  long,  and  exposes  or  trips  us 
up.  "  Keep  out  of  that  candle,"  says  old 
Father  Miller,  "  or  you  '11  get  a  singeing." 
"  Pooh,  pooh,  father,  I 've  been  dipped  in  the 
new  asbestos  preparation,"  and  frozz!  it  is  all 
over  with  young  Hopeful.  How  many  warn- 
ings have  been  drawn  from  Pretorian  bands, 
and  Janizaries,  and  Mamelukes,  to  make  Na- 
poleon III.  impossible  in  1851 !  I  found  my- 
self thinking  the  same  thoughts  over  again, 
when  we  walked  later  on  the  beach  and  picked 
up  pebbles.  The  old  time-ocean  throws  upon 
its  shores  just  such  rounded  and  polished  re- 
sults of  the  eternal  turmoil,  but  we  only  see 


A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL.  121 


the  beauty  of  those  we  have  got  the  headache 
in  stooping  for  ourselves,  and  wonder  at  the 
dull  brown  bits  of  common  stone  with  which 
our  comrades  have  stuffed  their  pockets.  Af- 
terwards this  little  fable  came  of  it. 

DOCTOR  LOBSTER. 

A  perch,  who  had  the  toothache,  once 
Thus  moaned,  like  any  human  dunce  : 
"  Why  must  great  souls  exhaust  so  soon 
Life's  thin  and  unsubstantial  boon  ? 
Existence  on  such  sculpin  terms,  — 
Their  vulgar  loves  and  hard- won  worms,— 
What  is  it  all  but  dross  to  me, 
Whose  nature  craves  a  larger  sea ; 
Whose  inches,  six  from  head  to  tail, 
Enclose  the  spirit  of  a  whale  ; 
Who,  if  great  baits  were  still  to  win, 
By  watchful  eye  and  fearless  fin 
Might  with  the  Zodiac's  awful  twain 
Room  for  a  third  immortal  gain  ? 
Better  the  crowd's  unthinking  plan,  — 
The  hook,  the  jerk,  the  frying-pan  ! 
0  Death,  thou  ever  roaming  shark, 
Ingulf  me  in  eternal  dark  !  " 

The  speech  was  cut  in  two  by  flight : 
A  real  shark  had  come  in  sight ; 

fill       <v   "    6     •  *  -11 


A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL. 


No  metaphoric  monster,  one 
It  soothes  despair  to  call  upon, 
But  stealthy,  sidelong,  grim,  I  wis, 
A  bit  of  downright  Nemesis  ; 
While  it  recovered  from  the  shock, 
Our  fish  took  shelter  'neath  a  rock : 
This  was  an  ancient  lobster's  house, 
A  lobster  of  prodigious  nous, 
So  old  that  barnacles  had  spread 
Their  white  encampments  o'er  its  head, 
And  of  experience  so  stupend, 
His  claws  were  blunted  at  the  end, 
Turning  life's  iron  pages  o'er, 
That  shut  and  can  be  oped  no  more. 

Stretching  a  hospitable  claw, 

"  At  once,"  said  he,  "  the  point  I  saw ; 

My  dear  young  friend,  your  case  I  rue, 

Your  great-great-grandfather  I  knew ; 

He  was  a  tried  and  tender  friend 

I  know,  —  I  ate  him  in  the  end  : 

In  this  vile  sea  a  pilgrim  long, 

Still  my  sight 's  good,  my  memory  strong ; 

The  only  sign  that  age  is  near 

Is  a  slight  deafness  in  this  ear ; 

I  understand  your  case  as  well 

As  this  my  old  familiar  shell ; 

This  sorrow 's  a  new-fangled  notion, 

Come  in  since  first  I  knew  the  ocean ; 


A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL.  123 


We  had  no  radicals,  nor  crimes, 
Nor  lobster -pots,  in  good  old  times  ; 
Your  traps  and  nets  and  hooks  we  owe 
To  Messieurs  Louis  Blanc  and  Co. ; 
I  say  to  all  my  sons  and  daughters, 
Shun  Red  Republican  hot  waters  ; 
No  lobster  ever  cast  his  lot 
Among  the  reds,  but  went  to  pot : 
Your  trouble 's  in  the  jaw,  you  said? 
Come,  let  me  just  nip  off  your  head, 
And,  when  a  new  one  comes,  the  pain 
Will  never  trouble  you  again  : 
Nay,  nay,  fear  naught :  't  is  nature's  law. 
Four  times  I 've  lost  this  starboard  claw  ; 
And  still,  erelong,  another  grew, 
Good  as  the  old,  —  and  better  too  ! " 

The  perch  consented,  and  next  day 
An  osprey,  marketing  that  way, 
Picked  up  a  fish  without  a  head, 
Floating  with  belly  up,  stone  dead, 

MORAL. 

Sharp  are  the  teeth  of  ancient  saws, 
And  sauce  for  goose  is  gander's  sauce ; 
But  perch's  heads  are  n't  lobster's  claws. 

Monday,  15th.  —  The  morning  was  fine, 
and  we  were  called  at  four  o'clock.    At  the 


124        A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL. 


moment  my  door  was  knocked  at,  I  was  mount- 
ing a  giraffe  with  that  charming  nil  admirari 
which  characterizes  dreams,  to  visit  Prester 
John.  Rat-tat-tat-tat !  upon  my  door  and 
upon  the  horn  gate  of  dreams  also.  I  re- 
marked to  my  skowhegan  (the  Tatar  for 
giraffe-driver)  that  I  was  quite  sure  the  ani- 
mal had  the  raps,  a  common  disease  among 
them,  for  I  heard  a  queer  knocking  noise  in- 
side him.  It  is  the  sound  of  his  joints,  O 
Tambourgi !  (an  Oriental  term  of  reverence,) 
and  proves  him  to  be  of  the  race  of  El  Kei- 
rat.  Rat-tat-tat-too !  and  I  lost  my  dinner  at 
the  Prester' s,  embarking  for  a  voyage  to  the 
Northwest  Carry  instead.  Never  use  the 
word  canoe,  my  dear  Storg,  if  you  wish  to 
letain  your  self-respect.  Birch  is  the  term 
fimong  us  backwoodsmen.  I  never  knew  it 
till  yesterday  ;  but,  like  a  true  philosopher,  I 
made  it  appear  as  if  I  had  been  intimate  with 
it  from  childhood.  The  rapidity  with  which 
the  human  mind  levels  itself  to  the  standard 
around  it  gives  us  the  most  pertinent  warning 


A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL.  125 


as  to  the  company  we  keep.  It  is  as  hard 
for  most  characters  to  stay  at  their  own  aver- 
age point  in  all  companies,  as  for  a  thermome- 
ter to  say  65°  for  twenty-four  hours  together. 
I  like  this  in  our  friend  Johannes  Taurus,  that 
he  carries  everywhere  and  maintains  his  insu- 
lar temperature,  and  will  have  everything 
accommodate  itself  to  that.  Shall  I  confess 
that  this  morning  I  would  rather  have  broken 
the  moral  law,  than  have  endangered  the  equi- 
poise of  the  birch  by  my  awkwardness  ?  that 
I  should  have  been  prouder  of  a  compliment 
to  my  paddling,  than  to  have  had  Loth  my 
guides  suppose  me  the  author  of  Hamlet  ? 
Well,  Cardinal  Richelieu  used  to  jump  over 
chairs. 

We  were  to  paddle  about  twenty  miles, 
but  we  made  it  rather  more  by  crossing  and 
recrossing  the  lake.  Twice  we  landed,  — 
once  at  a  camp,  where  we  found  the  cook 
alone,  baking  bread  and  gingerbread.  Mon- 
sieur Soyer  would  have  been  startled  a  little 
by  this  shaggy  professor,  —  this  Pre-Raphael- 

{ 


126         -4  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL. 


ite  of  cookery.  He  represented  the  salceratus 
period  of  the  art,  and  his  bread  was  of  a  bril- 
liant yellow,  like  those  cakes  tinged  with  saf- 
fron, which  hold  out  so  long  against  time  and 
the  flies  in  little  water-side  shops  of  seaport 
towns,  —  dingy  extremities  of  trade  fit  to  moul- 
der on  Lethe  wharf.  His  water  was  better, 
squeezed  out  of  ice-cold  granite  in  the  neigh- 
boring mountains,  and  sent  through  subter- 
ranean ducts  to  sparkle  up  by  the  door  of 
the  camp. 

"  There 's  nothin'  so  sweet  an'  hulsome 
as  your  real  spring  water,"  said  Uncle  Zeb, 
"  git  it  pure.  But  it 's  dreffle  hard  to  git 
it  that  ain't  got  sunthin'  the  matter  of  it. 
Snow-water  '11  burn  a  man's  inside  out,  —  I 
larned  that  to  the  'Roostick  war,  —  and  the 
snow  lays  terrible  long  on  some  o'  thes'ere 
hills.  Me  an'  Eb  Stiles  was  up  old  Ktahdn 
once  jest  about  this  time  o'  year,  an'  we  come 
acrost  a  kind  o'  holler  like,  as  full  o'  snow  as 
your  stockin 's  full  o'  your  foot.  I  see  it 
fust,  an'  took   an'  rammed   a  settin'-pole 


A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL.  127 


wahl,  it  was  all  o'  twenty  foot  into 't,  an' 
could  n't  fin'  no  bottom.  I  dunno  as  there 's 
snow-water  enough  in  this  to  do  no  hurt.  I 
don't  somehow  seem  to  think  that  real  spring- 
water  's  so  plenty  as  it  used  to  be."  And 
Uncle  Zeb,  with  perhaps  a  little  over-refine- 
ment of  scrupulosity,  applied  his  lips  to  the 
Ethiop  ones  of  a  bottle  of  raw  gin,  with  a  kiss 
that  drew  out  its  very  soul,  —  a  basia  that 
Secundus  might  have  sung.  He  must  have 
been  a  wonderful  judge  of  water,  for  he  ana- 
lyzed this,  and  detected  its  latent  snow  simply 
by  his  eye,  and  without  the  clumsy  process 
of  tasting.  I  could  not  help  thinking  that 
he  had  made  the  desert  his  dwelling-place 
chiefly  in  order  to  enjoy  the  ministrations  of 
this  one  fair  spirit  unmolested. 

We  pushed  on.  Little  islands  loomed  trem- 
bling between  sky  and  water,  like  hanging 
gardens.  Gradually  the  filmy  trees  defined 
themselves,  the  aerial  enchantment  lost  its 
potency,  and  we  came  up  with  common  prose 
islands  that  had  so  late  been  magical  and  po« 


128        A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL. 

etic.  The  old  story  of  the  attained  and  un- 
attained.  About  noon  we  reached  the  head 
of  the  lake,  and  took  possession  of  a  deserted 
wongen,  in  which  to  cook  and  eat  our  dinner. 
No  Jew,  I  am  sure,  can  have  a  more  thorough 
dislike  of  salt  pork  than  I  have  in  a  normal 
state,  yet  I  had  already  eaten  it  raw  with 
hard  bread  for  lunch,  and  relished  it  keenly. 
We  soon  had  our  tea-kettle  over  the  fire,  and 
before  long  the  cover  was  chattering  with  the 
escaping  steam,  wThich  had  thus  vainly  begged 
of  all  men  to  be  saddled  and  bridled,  till 
James  Watt  one  day  happened  to  overhear 
it.  One  of  our  guides  shot  three  Canada 
grouse,  and  these  were  turned  slowly  between 
the  fire  and  a  bit  of  salt  pork,  which  dropped 
fatness  upon  them  as  it  fried.  Although  my 
fingers  were  certainly  not  made  before  knives 
and  forks,  yet  they  served  as  a  convenient 
substitute  for  those  more  ancient  inventions. 
We  sat  round,  Turk-fashion,  and  ate  thank- 
tiilly,  while  a  party  of  aborigines  of  the  Mos- 
quito tribe,  who  had  camped  in  the  wongen 


A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL.  129 


before  we  arrived,  dined  upon  us.  I  do  not 
know  what  the  British  Protectorate  of  the 
Mosquitoes  amounts  to ;  but,  as  I  squatted 
there  at  the  mercy  of  these  blood-thirsty# sav- 
ages, I  no  longer  wondered  that  the  classic 
Everett  had  been  stung  into  a  willingness  for 
war  on  the  question. 

"  This  'ere 'd  be  about  a  complete  place  for 
a  camp,  ef  there  was  on'y  a  spring  o'  sweet 
water  handy.  Frizzled  pork  goes  wal,  donrt 
it  ?  Yes,  an'  sets  wal,  too,"  said  Uncle  Zeb, 
and  he  again  tilted  his  bottle,  which  rose 
nearer  and  nearer  to  an  angle  of  forty-five  at 
every  gurgle.  He  then  broached  a  curious 
dietetic  theory  :  "  The  reason  we  take  salt 
pork  along  is  cos  it  packs  handy  :  you  git  the 
greatest  amount  o'  board  in  the  smallest  com- 
pass, —  let  alone  that  it 's  more  nourishin' 
than  an'thin'  else.  It  kind  o'  don't  disgest 
so  quick,  but  stays  by  ye,  anourishin'  ye  all 
the  while. 

"  A  feller  can  live  wal  on  frizzled  pork  an' 
good  spring-water,  git  it  good.    To  the  'Roos- 

6*  I 


130         A  MOOSE  HE  AD  JOURNAL. 


tick  war  we  did  n't  ask  for  nothin'  better,  — 
on'y  beans."  (Tilt,  tilt,  gurgle,  gurgle.*) 
Then,  with  an  apparent  feeling  of  inconsist- 
ency, "  But  then,  come  to  git  used  to  a  par- 
ticular hind  o'  spring-water,  an'  it  makes  a 
feller  hard  to  suit.  Most  all  sorts  o'  water 
taste  kind  o'  zwsipid  away  from  home.  Now, 
I 've  gut  a  spring  to  my  place  that 's  as  sweet 
—  wahl,  it 's  as  sweet  as  maple  sap.  A  feller 
acts  about  water  jest  as  he  does  about  a  pair 
o'  boots.  It 's  all  on  it  in  gittin'  wonted. 
Now,  them  boots,"  &c,  &c.  (Gurgle,  gurgle, 
gurgle,  smack!) 

All  this  while  he  was  packing  away  the 
remains  of  the  pork  and  hard  bread  in  two 
large  firkins.  This  accomplished,  we  re- 
embarked,  our  uncle  on  his  way  to  the  birch 
essaying  a  kind  of  song  in  four  or  five  parts, 
of  which  the  words  were  hilarious  and  the 
tune  profoundly  melancholy,  and  which  was 
finished,  and  the  rest  of  his  voice  apparently 
jerked  out  of  him  in  one  sharp  falsetto  note, 
by  his  tripping  over  the  root  of  a  tree.  We 


A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL.  131 


paddled  a  short  distance  up  a  brook  which 
came  into  the  lake  smoothly  through  a  little 
meadow  not  far  off.  We  soon  reached  the 
Northwest  Carry,  and  our  guide,  pointing 
through  the  woods,  said  :  "  That 's  the  Can- 
nydy  road.  You  can  travel  that  clearn  to 
Kebeck,  a  hunderd  an'  twenty  mile,"  —  a 
privilege  of  which  I  respectfully  declined  to 
avail  myself.  The  offer,  however,  remains 
open  to  the  public.  The  Carry  is  called  two 
miles  ;  but  this  is  the  estimate  of  somebody 
who  had  nothing  to  lug.  I  had  a  headache 
and  all  my  baggage,  which,  with  a  traveller's 
instinct,  I  had  brought  with  me.  (P.  S. — 
I  did  not  even  take  the  keys  out  of  my  pocket, 
and  both  my  bags  were  wet  through  before 
I  came  back.)  My  estimate  of  the  distance 
is  eighteen  thousand  six  hundred  and  seventy- 
four  miles  and  three  quarters,  —  the  fraction 
being  the  part  left  to  be  travelled  after  one 
of  my  companions  most  kindly  insisted  on 
relieving  me  of  my  heaviest  bag.  I  know 
very  welL  that  the  ancient  Roman  soldiers 


132         A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL. 

used  to  carry  sixty  pounds'  weight,  and  all 
that ;  but  I  am  not,  and  never  shall  be,  an 
ancient  Roman  soldier,  —  no,  not  even  in  the 
miraculous  Thundering  Legion.  Uncle  Zeb 
slung  the  two  provender  firkins  across  his 
shoulder,  and  trudged  along,  grumbling  that 
"  he  never  see  sech  a  contrairy  pair  as  them." 
He  had  begun  upon  a  second  bottle  of  his 
"particular  kind  o'  spring-water,"  and,  at 
every  rest,  the  gurgle  of  this  peripatetic  foun- 
tain might  be  heard,  followed  by  a  smack,  a 
fragment  of  mosaic  song,  or  a  confused  clatter 
with  the  cowhide  boots,  being  an  arbitrary 
symbol,  intended  to  represent  the  festive 
dance.  Christian's  pack  gave  him  not  half 
so  much  trouble  as  the  firkins  gave  Uncle 
Zeb.  It  grew  harder  and  harder  to  sling 
them,  and  with  every  fresh  gulp  of  the  Bata- 
vian  elixir,  they  got  heavier.  Or  rather,  the 
truth  was,  that  his  hat  grew  heavier,  in  which 
he  was  carrying  on  an  extensive  manufac- 
ture of  bricks  without  straw.  At  last  affairs 
reached  a  crisis,  and  a  particularly  favorable 


A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL.  133 


pitch  offering,  with  a  puddle  at  the  foot  of  it, 
even  the  boots  afforded  no  sufficient  ballast, 
and  away  went  our  uncle,  the  satellite  firkins 
accompanying  faithfully  his  headlong  flight. 
Did  ever  exiled  monarch  or  disgraced  minis- 
ter find  the  cause  of  his  fall  in  himself?  Is 
there  not  always  a  strawberry  at  the  bottom 
of  our  cup  of  life,  on  which  we  can  lay  all 
the  blame  of  our  deviations  from  the  straight 
path  ?  Till  now  Uncle  Zeb  had  contrived  to 
give  a  gloss  of  volition  to  smaller  stumblings 
and  gyrations,  by  exaggerating  them  into  an 
appearance  of  playful  burlesque.  But  the 
present  case  was  beyond  any  such  subterfuges. 
He  held  a  bed  of  justice  where  he  sat,  and 
then  arose  slowly,  with  a  stern  determination 
of  vengeance  stiffening  every  muscle  of  his 
face.  But  what  would  he  select  as  the  cul- 
prit? "  It 's  that  cussed  firkin,"  he  mumbled 
to  himself.  "  I  never  knowed  a  firkin  cair 
on  so,  —  no,  not  in  the  'Roostehicick  war. 
There,  go  long,  will  ye  ?  and  don't  come  back 
till  you 've  larned  how  to  walk  with  a  genel* 


134        A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL. 


man  !  "  And,  seizing  the  unhappy  scapegoat 
by  the  bail,  he  hurled  it  into  the  forest.  It 
is  a  curious  circumstance,  that  it  was  not  the 
firkin  containing  the  bottle  which  was  thus 
condemned  to  exile. 

The  end  of  the  Carry  was  reached  at  last, 
and,  as  we  drew  near  it,  we  heard  a  sound  of 
shouting  and  laughter.  It  came  from  a  par- 
ty of  men  making  hay  of  the  wild  grass  in 
Seboomok  meadows,  which  lie  around  Seboo- 
mok  pond,  into  which  the  Carry  empties  it- 
self. Their  camp  was  near,  and  our  two 
hunters  set  out  for  it,  leaving  us  seated  in 
the  birch  on  the  plashy  border  of  the  pond. 
The  repose  was  perfect.  Another  heaven 
hallowed  and  deepened  the  polished  lake,,  and 
through  that  nether  world  the  fish-hawk's 
double  floated  with  balanced  wings,  or,  wheel- 
ing suddenly,  flashed  his  whitened  breast 
against  the  sun.  As  the  clattering  kingfisher 
flew  unsteadily  across,  and  seemed  to  push 
his  heavy  head  along  with  ever-renewing  efr 
fort,  a  visionary  mate  flitted  from  downward 


A  MOOSE  HE  AD  JOURNAL.  135 

tree  to  tree  below.  Some  tall  alders  shaded 
us  from  the  sun,  in  whose  yellow  afternoon 
light  the  drowsy  forest  was  steeped,  giving 
out  that  wholesome  resinous  perfume,  almost 
the  only  warm  odor  which  it  is  refreshing  to 
breathe.  The  tame  hay-cocks  in  the  midst 
of  the  wildness  gave  one  a  pleasant  reminis- 
cence of  home,  like  hearing  one's  native  tongue 
in  a  strange  country. 

Presently  our  hunters  came  back,  bringing 
with  them  a  tall,  thin,  active-looking  man, 
with  black  eyes,  that  glanced  unconsciously 
on  all  sides,  like  one  of  those  spots  of  sunlight 
which  a  child  dances  up  and  down  the  street 
with  a  bit  of  looking-glass.  This  was  M.,  the 
captain  of  the  hay-makers,  a  famous  river- 
driver,  and  who  was  to  have  fifty  men  under 
him  next  winter.  I  could  now  understand 
that  sleepless  vigilance  of  eye.  He  had  con- 
sented to  take  two  of  our  party  in  his  birch 
to  search  for  moose.  A  quick,  nervous,  de- 
cided man,  he  got  them  into  the  birch,  and 
was  off  instantly,  without  a  superfluous  word 


136        A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL. 

He  evidently  looked  upon  them  as  he  would 
upon  a  couple  of  logs  which  he  was  to  deliver 
at  a  certain  place.  Indeed,  I  doubt  if  life 
and  the  world  presented  themselves  to  Napier 
himself  in  a  more  logarithmic  way.  His  only 
thought  was  to  do  the  immediate  duty  well, 
and  to  pilot  his  particular  raft  down  the 
crooked  stream  of  life  to  the  ocean  beyond. 
The  birch  seemed  to  feel  him  as  an  inspiring 
soul,  and  slid  away  straight  and  swift  for  the 
outlet  of  the  pond.  As  he  disappeared  under 
the  over-arching  alders  of  the  brook,  our  two 
hunters  could  not  repress  a  grave  and  meas- 
ured applause.  There  is  never  any  extrava- 
gance among  these  woodmen ;  their  eye,  ac- 
customed to  reckoning  the  number  of  feet 
which  a  tree  will  scale,  is  rapid  and  close  in 
its  guess  of  the  amount  of  stuff  in  a  man.  It 
was  laudari  a  laudato,  however,  for  they  them- 
selves were  accounted  good  men  in  a  birch. 
I  was  amused,  in  talking  with  them  about 
him,  to  meet  with  an  instance  of  that  ten- 
dency of  the  human  mind  to  assign  some 


A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL.  137 


utterly  improbable  reason  for  gifts  which  seem 
unaccountable.  After  due  praise,  one  of  them 
said,  "  I  guess  he 's  got  some  Injun  in  him," 
although  I  knew  very  well  that  the  speaker 
had  a  thorough  contempt  for  the  red-man, 
mentally  and  physically.  Here  was  mythol- 
ogy in  a  small  wray,  —  the  same  that  under 
more  favorable  auspices  hatched  Helen  out 
of  an  egg  and  gave  Merlin  an  Incubus  for 
a  father.  I  was  pleased  with  all  I  saw  of 
M.  He  was  in  his  narrow  sphere  a  true  avat; 
avSpcQV,  and  the  ragged  edges  of  his  old  hat 
seemed  to  become  coronated  as  I  looked  at 
him.  He  impressed  me  as  a  man  really  edu- 
cated, —  that  is,  with  his  aptitudes  drawn  out 
and  ready  for  use.  He  was  A.  M.  and  LL.  D. 
in  Woods  College,  —  Axe-master  and  Doc- 
tor of  Logs.  Are  not  our  educations  com- 
monly like  a  pile  of  books  laid  over  a  plant 
in  a  pot  ?  The  compressed  nature  struggles 
through  at  every  crevice,  but  can  never  get 
the  cramp  and  stunt  out  of  it.  We  spend 
all  our  youth  in  building  a  vessel  for  our  voy- 


138         A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL. 


age  of  life,  and  set  forth  with  streamers  fly- 
ing ;  but  the  moment  we  come  nigh  the  great 
loadstone  mountain  of  our  proper  destiny,  out 
leap  all  our  carefully-driven  bolts  and  nails, 
and  we  get  many  a  mouthful  of  good  salt 
brine,  and  many  a  buffet  of  the  rough  water 
of  experience,  before  we  secure  the  bare  right 
to  live. 

We  now  entered  the  outlet,  a  long-drawn 
aisle  of  alder,  on  each  side  of  which  spired  tall 
firs,  spruces,  and  white  cedars.  The  motion 
of  the  birch  reminded  me  of  the  gondola,  and 
they  represent  among  water-craft  the  fe- 
lidce,  the  cat  tribe,  stealthy,  silent,  treacher- 
ous, and  preying  by  night.  I  closed  my  eyes, 
and  strove  to  fancy  myself  in  the  dumb  city, 
whose  only  horses  are  the  bronze  ones  of  St. 
Mark.  But  Nature  would  allow  no  rival,  and 
bent  down  an  alder-bough  to  brush  my  cheek 
and  recall  me.  Only  the  robin  sings  in  the 
emerald  chambers  of  these  tall  sylvan  palaces, 
and  the  squirrel  leaps  from  hanging  balcony 
to  balcony. 


A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL.  139 


The  rain  which  the  loons  foreboded  had 
raised  the  west  branch  of  the  Penobscot  so 
much,  that  a  strong  current  was  setting  back 
into  the  pond  ;  and,  when  at  last  we  brushed 
through  into  the  river,  it  was  full  to  the  brim, 
—  too  full  for  moose,  the  hunters  said.  Rivers 
with  low  banks  have  always  the  compensa- 
tion of  giving  a  sense  of  entire  fulness.  The 
sun  sank  behind  its  horizon  of  pines,  whose 
pointed  summits  notched  the  rosy  west  in  an 
endless  black  sierra.  At  the  same  moment 
the  golden  moon  swung  slowly  up  in  the  east, 
like  the  other  scale  of  that  Homeric  balance 
in  which  Zeus  weighed  the  deeds  of  men. 
Sunset  and  moonrise  at  once  !  Adam  had  no 
more  in  Eden  —  except  the  head  of  Eve  upon 
his  shoulder.  The  stream  was  so  smooth,  that 
the  floating  logs  we  met  seemed  to  hang  in  a 
glowing  atmosphere,  the  shadow-half  being  as 
real  as  the  solid.  And  gradually  the  mind 
was  etherized  to  a  like  dreamy  placidity,  till 
fact  and  fancy,  the  substance  and  the  image, 
floating  on  the  current  of  reverie,  became  but 


140         A  MOOSE  HE  AD  JOURNAL. 

as  the  upper  and  under  halves  of  one  unreal 
reality. 

In  the  west  still  lingered  a  pale-green  light. 
I  do  not  know  whether  it  be  from  greater 
familiarity,  but  it  always  seems  to  me  that 
the  pinnacles  of  pine-trees  make  an  edge  to 
the  landscape  which  tells  better  against  the 
twilight,  or  the  fainter  dawn  before  the  rising 
moon.,  than  the  rounded  and  cloud-cumulus 
outline  of  hard-wood  trees. 

After  paddling  a  couple  of  miles,  we  found 
the  arbored  mouth  of  the  little  Malahoodus 
River,  famous  for  moose.  We  had  been  on 
the  look-out  for  it,  and  I  was  amused  to  hear 
one  of  the  hunters  say  to  the  other,  to  assure 
himself  of  his  familiarity  with  the  spot,  "  You 
drove  the  West  Branch  last  spring,  did  n't 
you  ?  "  as  one  of  us  might  ask  about  a  horse. 
We  did  not  explore  the  Malahoodus  far,  but 
left  the  other  birch  to  thread  its  cedared  soli- 
tudes, while  we  turned  back  to  try  our  for- 
tunes in  the  larger  stream.  We  paddled  on 
about  four  miles  farther,  lingering  now  and 


A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL  141 


then  opposite  the  black  mouth  of  a  moose- 
path.  The  incidents  of  our  voyage  were  few, 
but  quite  as  exciting  and  profitable  as  the 
items  of  the  newspapers.  A  stray  log  com- 
pensated very  well  for  the  ordinary  run  of 
accidents,  and  the  floating  carkiss  of  a  moose 
which  we  met  could  pass  muster  instead  of  a 
singular  discovery  of  human  remains  by  work- 
men in  digging  a  cellar.  Once  or  twice  we 
saw  what  seemed  ghosts  of  trees  ;  but  they 
turned  out  to  be  dead  cedars,  in  winding- 
sheets  of  long  gray  moss,  made  spectral  by 
the  moonlight.  Just  as  we  were  turning  to 
drift  back  down-stream,  we  heard  a  loud 
gnawing  sound  close  by  us  on  the  bank.  One 
of  our  guides  thought  it  a  hedgehog,  the  other 
a  bear.  I  inclined  to  the  bear,  as  making  the 
adventure  more  imposing.  A  rifle  was  fired 
at  the  sound,  which  began  again  with  the  most 
provoking  indifference,  ere  the  echo,  flaring 
madly  at  first  from  shore  to  shore,  died  far 
away  in  a  hoarse  sigh. 

Half  past  Eleven,  p.  m.  —  No  sign  of  a 


142         A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL. 


moose  yet.  The  birch,  it  seems,  was  strained 
at  the  Carry,  or  the  pitch  was  softened  as 
she  lay  on  the  shore  during  dinner,  and  she 
leaks  a  little.  If  there  be  any  virtue  in  the 
sitzbad,  I  shall  discover  it.  If  I  cannot  ex- 
tract green  cucumbers  from  the  moon's  rays, 
I  get  something  quite  as  cool.  One  of  the 
guides  shivers  so  as  to  shake  the  birch. 

Quarter  to  Twelve.  —  Later  from  the  Freshet! 
—  The  water  in  the  birch  is  about  three  inches 
deep,  but  the  dampness  reaches  already  nearly 
to  the  waist.  I  am  obliged  to  remove  the 
matches  from  the  ground-floor  of  my  trou- 
sers into  the  upper  story  of  a  breast-pocket. 
Meanwhile,  we  are  to  sit  immovable,  —  for 
fear  of  frightening  the  moose,  —  which  induces 
cramps. 

Half  past  Twelve.  —  A  crashing  is  heard  on 
the  left  bank.  This  is  a  moose  in  good  ear- 
nest. We  are  besought  to  hold  our  breaths, 
if  possible.  My  fingers  so  numb,  I  could  not, 
if  I  tried.  Crash!  crash!  again,  and  then  a 
plunge,  followed  by  dead  stillness.     "  Swim- 


A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL.  143 


mill'  crik,"  whispers  guide,  suppressing  all 
unnecessary  parts  of  speech,  —  "  don't  stir." 
I,  for  one,  am  not  likely  to.  A  cold  fog  which 
has  been  gathering  for  the  last  hour  has  fin- 
ished me.  I  fancy  myself  one  of  those  naked 
pigs  that  seem  rushing  out  of  market-doors  in 
winter,  frozen  in  a  ghastly  attitude  of  gallop. 
If  I  were  to  be  shot  myself,  I  should  feel  no 
interest  in  it.  As  it  is,  I  am  only  a  spectator, 
having  declined  a  gun.  Splash  !  again  ;  this 
time  the  moose  is  in  sight,  and  click !  click ! 
one  rifle  misses  fire  after  the  other.  The  fog 
has  quietly  spiked  our  batteries.  The  moose 
goes  crashing  up  the  bank,  and  presently  we 
can  hear  it  chewing  its  cud  close  by.  So  we 
lie  in  wait,  freezing. 

At  one  o'clock,  I  propose  to  land  at  a  de- 
serted wongen  I  had  noticed  on  the  way  up, 
where  I  will  make  a  fire,  and  leave  them  to 
refrigerate  as  much  longer  as  they  please. 
Axe  in  hand,  I  go  plunging  through  waist- 
deep  ^weeds  dripping  with  dew,  haunted  by  an 
intense  conviction  that  the  gnawing  sound  we 


7 


144         A  MOOSE  HE  AD  JOURNAL. 

had  heard  was  a  bear,  and  a  bear  at  least  eigh- 
teen hands  high.  There  is  something  poker- 
ish  about  a  deserted  dwelling,  even  in  broad 
daylight;  but  here  in  the  obscure  wood,  and 
the  moon  filtering  unwillingly  through  the 
trees  !  Well,  I  made  the  door  at  last,  and 
found  the  place  packed  fuller  with  darkness 
than  it  ever  had  been  with  hay.  Gradually 
I  was  able  to  make  things  out  a  little,  and 
began  to  hack  frozenly  at  a  log  which  I 
groped  out.  I  was  relieved  presently  by  one 
of  the  guides.  He  cut  at  once  into  one 
of  the  uprights  of  the  building  till  he  got 
some  dry  splinters,  and  we  soon  had  a  fire 
like  the  burning  of  a  whole  wood-wharf  in 
our  part  of  the  country.  My  companion 
went  back  to  the  birch,  and  left  me  to 
keep  house.  First  I  knocked  a  hole  in  the 
roof  (which  the  fire  began  to  lick  in  a  rel- 
ishing way)  for  a  chimney,  and  then  cleared 
away  a  damp  growth  of  "  pison-elder,"  to 
make  a  sleeping  place.  When  the  unsuccess- 
ful hunters  returned,  I  had  everything  quite 


A  MOOSE  HE  AD  JOURNAL.  145 


comfortable,  and  was  steaming  at  the  rate  of 
about  ten  horse-power  a  minute.  Young  Te- 
lemachus  was  sorry  to  give  up  the  moose  so 
soon,  and,  with  the  teeth  chattering  almost 
out  of  his  head,  he  declared  that  he  would 
like  to  stick  it  out  all  night.  However,  he 
reconciled  himself  to  the  fire,  and,  making 
our  beds  of  some  "  splits  "  which  we  poked 
from  the  roof,  we  lay  down  at  half  past  two. 
I,  who  have  inherited  a  habit  of  looking  into 
every  closet  before  I  go  to  bed,  for  fear  of 
fire,  had  become  in  two  days  such  a  stoic  of 
the  woods,  that  I  went  to  sleep  tranquilly, 
certain  that  my  bedroom  would  be  in  a  blaze 
before  morning.  And  so,  indeed,  it  was ;  and 
the  withes  that  bound  it  together  being  burned 
off,  one  of  the  sides  fell  in  without  waking 
me. 

Tuesday,  16th.  —  After  a  sleep  of  two  hours 
and  a  half,  so  sound  that  it  was  as  good  as 
eight,  we  started  at  half  past  four  for  the  hay- 
makers' camp  again.  We  found  them  just 
getting  breakfast.     We  sat  down  upon  the 


146        A  MOOSE  HEAD  JOURNAL. 


deacon-seat  before  the  fire  blazing  between 
the  bedroom  and  the  salle  d  manger^  which 
were  simply  two  roofs  of  spruce-bark,  sloping 
to  the  ground  on  one  side,  the  other  three 
being  left  open.  We  found  that  we  had,  at 
least,  been  luckier  than  the  other  party,  for 
M.  had  brought  back  his  convoy  without  even 
seeing  a  moose.  As  there  was  not  room  at 
the  table  for  all  of  us  to  breakfast  together, 
these  hospitable  woodmen  forced  us  to  sit 
down  first,  although  we  resisted  stoutly.  Our 
breakfast  consisted  of  fresh  bread,  fried  salt 
pork,  stewed  whortleberries,  and  tea.  Our 
kind  hosts  refused  to  take  money  for  it,  nor 
would  M\  accept  anything  for  his  trouble. 
This  seemed  even  more  open-handed  when  I 
remembered  that  they  had  brought  all  their 
stores  over  the  Carry  upon  their  shoulders, 
paying  an  ache  extra  for  every  pound.  If 
their  hospitality  lacked  anything  of  hard  ex 
ternal  polish,  it  had  all  the  deeper  grace  which 
springs  only  from  sincere  manliness.  I  have 
rarely  sat  at  a  table  d'hote  wh:eh  might  not 


A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL.  147 


have  taken  a  lesson  from  them  in  essential 
courtesy.  I  have  never  seen  a  finer  race  of 
men.  They  have  all  the  virtues  of  the  sailor, 
without  that  unsteady  roll  in  the  gait  with 
which  the  ocean  proclaims  itself  quite  as  much 
in  the  moral  as  in  the  physical  habit  of  a  man. 
They  appeared  to  me  to  have  hewn  out  a 
short  northwest  passage  through  wintry  woods 
to  those  spice-lands  of  character  which  we 
dwellers  in  cities  must  reach,  if  at  all,  by  weary 
voyages  in  the  monotonous  track  of  the  trades. 

By  the  way,  as  we  were  embirching  last 
evening  for  our  moose-chase,  I  asked  what  I 
was  to  do  with  my  baggage.  "  Leave  it  here," 
said  our  guide,  and  he  laid  the  bags  upon  a 
platform  of  alders,  which  he  bent  down  to 
keep  them  beyond  reach  of  the  rising  water. 

"  Will  they  be  safe  here  ?.  " 

"  As  safe  as  they  would  be  locked  up  in 
your  house  at  home." 

And  so  I  found  them  at  my  return  ;  only 
the  nay-makers  had  carried  them  to  their 
camp  for  greater  security  against  the  chances 
of  the  weather. 


148        A  MOOSE  HEAD  JOURNAL. 


We  got  back  to  Kineo  in  time  for  dinner ; 
and  in  the  afternoon,  the  weather  being  fine, 
went  up  the  mountain.  As  wTe  landed  at  the 
foot,  our  guide  pointed  to  the  remains  of  a 
red  shirt  and  a  pair  of  blanket  trousers. 
"  That,"  said  he,  "  is  the  reason  there 's  such 
a  trade  in  ready-made  clo'es.  A  suit  gits 
pooty  well  wore  out  by  the  time  a  camp 
breaks  up  in  the  spring,  and  the  lumberers 
want  to  look  about  right  when  they  come  back 
into  the  settlements,  so  they  buy  somethin' 
ready-made,  and  heave  ole  bust-up  into  the 
bush."  True  enough,  thought  I,  this  is  the 
Ready-made  Age.  It  is  quicker  being  cov- 
ered than  fitted.  So  we  all  go  to  the  slop- 
shop and  come  out  uniformed,  every  mother's 
son  with  habits  of  thinking  and  doing  cut  on 
one  pattern,  with  no  special  reference  to  his 
peculiar  build. 

Kineo  rises  1750  feet  above  the  sea,  and 
750  above  the  lake.  The  climb  is  very  easy, 
with  fine  outlooks  at  every  turn  over  lake 
and  forest.    Near  the  top  is  a  spring  of  water, 


A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL.  149 


winch  even  Uncle  Zeb  might  have  allowed 
to  be  wholesome.  The  little  tin  dipper  was 
scratched  all  over  with  names,  showing  that 
vanity,  at  least,  is  not  put  out  of  breath  by  the 
ascent.  O  Ozymandias,  King  of  kings !  We 
are  all  scrawling  on  something  of  the  kind. 
"  My  name  is  engraved  on  the  institutions  of 
my  country,"  thinks  the  statesman.  But, 
alas !  institutions  are  as  changeable  as  tin-dip- 
pers ;  men  are  content  to  drink  the  same  old 
water,  if  the  shape  of  the  cup  only  be  new, 
and  our  friend  gets  two  lines  in  the  Biograph- 
ical Dictionaries.  After  all,  these  inscrip- 
tions, which  make  us  smile  up  here,  are  about 
as  valuable  as  the  Assyrian  ones  which  Hincks 
and  Rawlinson  read  at  cross-purposes.  Have 
we  not  Smiths  and  Browns  enough,  that  we 
must  ransack  the  ruins  of  Nimroud  for  more  ? 
Near  the  spring  we  met  a  Bloomer  !  It  was 
the  first  chronic  one  I  had  ever  seen.  It 
struck  me  as  a  sensible  costume  for  the  occa- 
sion*, and  it  will  be  the  only  wear  in  the  Greek 
Kalends,  when  women  believe  that  sense  is  an 
equivalent  for  grace. 


150        A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL. 


The  forest  primeval  is  best  seen  from  the 
top  of  a  mountain.  It  then  impresses  one 
by  its  extent,  like  an  Oriental  epic.  To  be 
in  it  is  nothing,  for  then  an  acre  is  as  good 
as  a  thousand  square  miles.  You  cannot  see 
five  rods  in  any  direction,  and  the  ferns, 
mosses,  and  tree-trunks  just  around  you  are 
the  best  of  it.  As  for  solitude,  night  will 
make  a  better  one  with  ten  feet  square  of 
pitch  dark ;  and  mere  size  is  hardly  an  ele- 
ment of  grandeur,  except  in  works  of  man, — 
as  the  Colosseum.  It  is  through  one  or  the 
other  pole  of  vanity  that  men  feel  the  sublime 
in  mountains.  It  is  either,  How  small  great 
I  am  beside  it !  or,  Big  as  you  are,  little  Fs 
soul  will  hold  a  dozen  of  you.  The  true  idea 
of  a  forest  is  not  a  selva  selvaggia,  but  some- 
thing humanized  a  little,  as  we  imagine  the 
forest  of  Arden,  with  trees  standing  at  royal 
intervals,  —  a  commonwealth,  and  not  a  com- 
munism. To  some  moods,  it  is  congenial  to 
look  over  endless  leagues  of  unbroken  sav- 
agery without  a  hint  of  man. 


A  MOOSEHEAD  JOURNAL.  l&l 

Wednesday.  —  This  morning  fished.  Tele- 
machus  caught  a  laker  of  thirteen  pounds  and 
a  half,  and  I  an  overgrown  cusk,  which  we 
threw  away,  but  which  I  found  afterwards 
Agassiz  would  have  been  glad  of,  for  all  is 
fish  that  comes  to  his  net,  from  the  fossil 
down.  The  fish,  when  caught,  are  straight- 
way knocked  on  the  head.  A  lad  who  went 
with  us  seeming  to  show  an  over-zeal  in  this 
operation,  we  remonstrated.  But  he  gave  a 
good,  human  reason  for  it,  —  "  He  no  need 
to  ha'  gone  and  been  a  fish  if  he  did  n't  like 
it,"  —  an  excuse  which  superior  strength  or 
cunning  has  always  found  sufficient.  It  was 
some  comfort,  in  this  case,  to  think  that  St. 
Jerome  believed  in  a  limitation  of  God's  provi- 
dence, and  that  it  did  not  extend  to  inanimate 
things  or  creatures  devoid  of  reason. 

Thus,  my  dear  Storg,  I  have  finished  my 
Oriental  adventures,  and  somewhat,  it  must 
be  owned,  in  the  diffuse  Oriental  manner. 
There  is  very  little  about  Moosehead  Lake 
in  it,  and  not  even  the  Latin  name  for  moose, 


152        A  MOOSE  HE  AD  JOURNAL. 


which  I  might  have  obtained  by  sufficient  re- 
search. If  I  had  killed  one,  I  would  have 
given  you  his  name  in  that  dead  language.  I 
did  not  profess  to  give  you  an  account  of  the 
lake ;  but  a  journal,  and,  moreover,  my  jour- 
nal, with  a  little  nature,  a  little  human  nature, 
and  a  great  deal  of  I  in  it,  which  last  ingre- 
dient I  take  to  be  the  true  spirit  of  this  spe- 
cies of  writing ;  all  the  rest  being  so  much 
water  for  tender  throats  which  cannot  take 
it  neat. 


Leave  s 

FROM 

My  Journal  in  Italy 

AND  ELSEWHERE. 


AT  SEA. 


THE  sea  was  meant  to  be  looked  at  from 
shore,  as  mountains  are  from  the  plain. 
Lucretius  made  this  discovery  long  ago,  and 
was  blunt  enough  to  blurt  it  forth,  romance 
and  sentiment  —  in  other  words,  the  pretence 
of  feeling  what  we  do  not  feel  —  being  inven- 
tions of  a  later  day.  To  be  sure,  Cicero  used 
to  twaddle  about  Greek  literature  and  philoso- 
phy, much  as  people  do  about  ancient  art  now- 
a-days  ;  but  I  rather  sympathize  with  those 
stout  old  Romans  who  despised  both,  and  be- 
lieved that  to  found  an  empire  was  as  grand 
an  achievement  as  to  build  an  epic  or  to  carve 
a  statue.  But  though  there  might  have  been 
twaddle,  (as  why  not,  since  there  was  a  Sen- 
ate ?)  I  rather  think  Petrarch  was  the  first 

r 

choragus  of  that  sentimental  dance  which  so 


156 


AT  SEA. 


long  led  young  folks  away  from  the  realities  of 
life  like  the  piper  of  Hamelin,  and  whose  suc- 
cession ended,  let  us  hope,  with  Chateaubriand. 
But  for  them,  Byron,  whose  real  strength  lay 
in  his  sincerity,  would  never  have  talked  about 
the  "  sea  bounding  beneath  him  like  a  steed 
that  knows  his  rider,"  and  all  that  sort  of 
thing.  Even  if  it  had  been  true,  steam  has 
been  as  fatal  to  that  part  of  the  romance  of 
the  sea  as  to  hand-loom  weaving.  But  what 
say  you  to  a  twelve  days'  calm  such  as  we 
dozed  through  in  mid-Atlantic  and  in  mid- 
August  ?  I  know  nothing  so  tedious  at  once 
and  exasperating  as  that  regular  slap  of  the 
wilted  sails  when  the  ship  rises  and  falls  wTith 
the  slow  breathing  of  the  sleeping  sea,  one 
greasy,  brassy  swell  following  another,  slow, 
smooth,  immitigable  as  the  series  of  Words- 
worth's "  Ecclesiastical  Sonnets."  Even  at 
his  best,  Neptune,  in  a  tete-a-tete^  has  a  way 
of  repeating  himself,  an  obtuseness  to  the  ne 
quid  nimis,  that  is  stupefying.  It  reminds  me 
of  organ-music  and  my  good  friend  Sebastian 


AT  SEA. 


157 


Bach.  A  fugue  or  two  will  do  very  well ;  but 
a  concert  made  up  of  nothing  else  is  altogether 
too  epic  for  me.  There  is  nothing  so  desper- 
ately monotonous  as  the  sea,  and  I  no  longer 
wonder  at  the  cruelty  of  pirates.  Fancy  an 
existence  in  which  the  coming  up  of  a  clumsy 
finback  whale,  who  says  Pooh !  to  you  sol- 
emnly as  you  lean  over  the  taffrail,  is  an  event 
as  exciting  as  an  election  on  shore !  The 
dampness  seems  to  strike  into  the  wits  as  into 
the  lucifer-matches,  so  that  one  may  scratch 
a  thought  half  a  dozen  times  and  get  nothing 
at  last  but  a  faint  sputter,  the  forlorn  hope  of 
fire,  which  only  goes  far  enough  to  leave  a 
sense  of  suffocation  behind  it.  Even  smoking 
becomes  an  employment  instead  of  a  solace. 
Who  less  likely  to  come  to  their  wit's  end  than 
W.  M.  T.  and  A.  H.  C.  ?  Yet  I  have  seen 
them  driven  to  five  meals  a  day  for  mental  oc- 
cupation. I  sometimes  sit  and  pity  Noah ;  but 
even  he  had  this  advantage  over  all  succeed- 
ing navigators,  that,  wherever  he  landed,  he 
was  stare  to  get  no  ill  news  from  home.  He 


158 


AT  SEA. 


should  be  canonized  as  the  patron-saint  of 
newspaper  correspondents,  being  the  only  man 
who  ever  had  the  very  last  authentic  intelli- 
gence from  everywhere. 

The  finback  whale  recorded  just  above  has 
much  the  look  of  a  brown-paper  parcel,  —  the 
whitish  stripes  that  run  across  him  answering 
for  the  pack-thread.  He  has  a  kind  of  acci- 
dental hole  in  the  top  of  his  head,  through 
which  he  pooh-poohs  the  rest  of  creation,  and 
which  looks  as  if  it  had  been  made  by  the 
chance  thrust  of  a  chestnut  rail.  He  was  our 
first  event.  Our  second  was  harpooning  a 
sunfish,  which  basked  dozing  on  the  lap  of  the 
sea,  looking  so  much  like  the  giant  turtle  of 
an  alderman's  dream,  that  I  am  persuaded 
he  would  have  made  mock-turtle  soup  rather 
than  acknowledge  his  imposture.  But  he 
broke  away  just  as  they  were  hauling  him 
over  the  side,  and  sank  placidly  through  the 
clear  water,  leaving  behind  him  a  crimson  trail 
that  wavered  a  moment  and  was  gone. 

The  sea,  though,  has  better  sights  than  these. 


AT  SEA. 


159 


When  we  were  up  with  the  Azores,  we  be- 
gan to  meet  flying-fish  and  Portuguese  men- 
of-war  beautiful  as  the  galley  of  Cleopatra,  tiny 
craft  that  dared  these  seas  before  Columbus.  I 
have  seen  one  of  the  former  rise  from  the  crest 
of  a  wave,  and,  glancing  from  another  some 
two  hundred  feet  beyond,  take  a  fresh  flight 
of  perhaps  as  long.  How  Calderon  would 
have  similized  this  pretty  creature  had  he  ever 
seen  it !  How  would  he  have  run  him  up  and 
down  the  gamut  of  simile !  If  a  fish,  then  a 
fish  with  wings  ;  if  a  bird,  then  a  bird  with 
fins ;  and  so  on,  keeping  up  the  poor  shuttle- 
cock of  a  conceit  as  is  his  wont.  Indeed,  the 
poor  thing  is  the  most  killing  bait  for  a  com- 
parison, and  I  assure  you  I  have  three  or  four 
in  my  inkstand ;  — but  be  calm,  they  shall  stay 
there.  Moore,  who  looked  on  all  nature  as  a 
kind  of  Grradus  ad  Parnassum,  a  thesaurus  of 
similitude,  and  spent  his  life  in  a  game  of 
What  is  my  thought  like  ?  with  himself,  did 
the  flying-fish  on  his  way  to  Bermuda.  So  I 
*eave  him  in  peace. 


160 


AT  SEA. 


The  most  beautiful  thing  I  have  seen  at  sea, 
all  the  more  so  that  I  had  never  heard  of  it, 
is  the  trail  of  a  shoal  of  fish  through  the  phos- 
phorescent water.  It  is  like  a  flight  of  silver 
rockets,  or  the  streaming  of  northern  lights 
through  that  silent  nether  heaven.  I  thought 
nothing  could  go  beyond  that  rustling  star- 
foam  which  was  churned  up  by  our  ship's 
bows,  or  those  eddies  and  disks  of  dreamy 
flame  that  rose  and  wandered  out  of  sight 
behind  us. 

'T  was  fire  our  ship  was  plunging  through, 
Cold  fire  that  o'er  the  quarter  flew  ; 
And  wandering  moons  of  idle  flame 
Grew  full  and  waned,  and  went  and  came, 
Dappling  with  light  the  huge  sea-snake 
That  slid  behind  us  in  the  wake. 

But  there  was  something  even  more  deli- 
cately rare  in  the  apparition  of  the  fish,  as 
they  turned  up  in  gleaming  furrows  the  la- 
tent moonshine  which  the  ocean  seemed  to 
have  hoarded  against  these  vacant  interlunar 
nights.     In  the  Mediterranean  one  day,  as 


AT  SEA. 


161 


we  were  lying  becalmed,  I  observed  the  wa- 
ter freckled  with  dingy  specks,  which  at  last 
gathered  to  a  pinkish  scum  on  the  surface. 
The  sea  had  been  so  phosphorescent  for  some 
nights,  that  when  the  Captain  gave  me  my 
bath,  by  dousing  me  with  buckets  from  the 
house  on  deck,  the  spray  flew  off  my  head  and 
shoulders  in  sparks.  It  occurred  to  me  that 
this  dirty-looking  scum  might  be  the  luminous 
matter,  and  I  had  a  pailful  dipped  up  to  keep 
till  after  dark.  When  I  went  to  look  at  it  after 
nightfall,  it  seemed  at  first  perfectly  dead ;  but 
when  I  shook  it,  the  whole  broke  out  into  what 
I  can  only  liken  to  milky  flames,  whose  lam- 
bent silence  was  strangely  beautiful,  and  star- 
tled me  almost  as  actual  projection  might  an 
alchemist.  I  could  not  bear  to  be  the  death 
of  so  much  beauty ;  so  I  poured  it  all  over- 
board again. 

Another  sight  worth  taking  a  voyage  for  is 
that  of  the  sails  by  moonlight.  Our  course 
was  "south  and  by  east,  half  south,"  so  that 
we  seemed  bound  for  the  full  moon  as  she 

K 


162 


AT  SEA. 


rolled  up  over  our  wavering  horizon.  Then 
I  used  to  go  forward  to  the  bowsprit  and  look 
back.  Our  ship  was  a  clipper,  with  every  rag 
set,  stunsails,  sky-scrapers,  and  all ;  nor  was 
it  easy  to  believe  that  such  a  wonder  could 
be  built  of  canvas  as  that  white  many-storied 
pile  of  cloud  that  stooped  over  me,  or  drew 
back  as  we  rose  and  fell  with  the  waves. 

These  are  all  the  wonders  I  can  recall  of 
my  five  weeks  at  sea,  except  the  sun.  Were 
you  ever  alone  with  the  sun  ?  You  think  it 
a  very  simple  question  ;  but  I  never  was,  in 
the  full  sense  of  the  word,  till  I  was  held  up 
to  him  one  cloudless  day  on  the  broad  buckler 
of  the  ocean.  I  suppose  one  might  have  the 
same  feeling  in  the  desert.  I  remember  get- 
ting something  like  it  years  ago,  when  I 
climbed  alone  to  the  top  of  a  mountain,  and 
lay  face  up  on  the  hot  gray  moss,  striving  to 
get  a  notion  of  how  an  Arab  might  feel.  It 
was  my  American  commentary  of  the  Koran, 
and  not  a  bad  one.  In  a  New  England  win- 
ter, too,  when  everything  is  gagged  with  snow 


AT  SEA. 


163 


as  if  some  gigantic  physical  geographer  were 
taking  a  cast  of  the  earth's  face  in  plaster,  the 
bare  knob  of  a  hill  will  introduce  you  to  the 
sun  as  a  comparative  stranger.  But  at  sea 
you  may  be  alone  with  him  day  after  day,  and 
almost  all  day  long.  I  never  understood  be- 
fore that  nothing  short  of  full  daylight  can  give 
the  supremest  sense  of  solitude.  Darkness 
will  not  do  so,  for  the  imagination  peoples  it 
with  more  shapes  than  ever  were  poured  from 
the  frozen  loins  of  the  populous  North.  The 
sun,  I  sometimes  think,  is  a  little  grouty  at 
sea,  especially  at  high  noon,  feeling  that  he 
wastes  his  beams  on  those  fruitless  furrows. 
It  is  otherwise  with  the  moon.  She  "  com- 
forts the  night,"  as  Chapman  finely  says,  and 
I  always  found  her  a  companionable  creature. 

In  the  ocean-horizon  I  took  untiring  delight. 
It  is  the  true  magic-circle  of  expectation  and 
conjecture,  —  almost  as  good  as  a  wishing- 
ring.  What  will  rise  over  that  edge  we  sail 
toward  daily  and  never  overtake  ?  A  sail  ? 
mr  island  ?  the  new  shore  of  the  Old  World  ? 


164 


AT  SEA. 


Something  rose  every  day,  which  I  need  not 
have  gone  so  far  to  see,  but  at  whose  levee  I 
was  a  much  more  faithful  courtier  than  on 
shore.  A  cloudless  sunrise  in  mid-ocean  is 
beyond  comparison  for  simple  grandeur.  It  is 
like  Dante's  style,  bare  and  perfect.  Naked 
sun  meets  naked  sea,  the  true  classic  of  nature. 
There  may  be  more  sentiment  in  morning  on 
shore,  —  the  shivering  fairy-jewelry  of  dew, 
the  silver  point-lace  of  sparkling  hoar-frost,  — 
but  there  is  also  more  complexity,  more  of 
the  romantic.  The  one  savors  of  the  elder 
Edda,  the  other  of  the  Minnesingers. 

And  I  thus  floating,  lonely  elf, 

A  kind  of  planet  by  myself, 

The  mists  draw  up  and  furl  away, 

And  in  the  east  a  warming  gray, 

Faint  as  the  tint  of  oaken  woods 

When  o'er  their  buds  May  breathes  and  broods, 

Tells  that  the  golden  sunrise-tide 

Is  lapsing  up  earth's  thirsty  side, 

Each  moment  purpling  on  the  erest 

Of  some  stark  billow  farther  west : 

And  as  the  sea-moss  droops  and  hears 

The  gurgling  flood  that  nears  and  nears, 


AT  SEA.  165 

* 

Aud  then  with  tremulous  content 

Floats  out  each  thankful  filament, 

So  waited  I  until  it  came. 

God's  daily  miracle,  —  O  shame 

That  I  had  seen  so  many  days 

Unthankful,  without  wondering  praise, 

Not  recking  more  this  bliss  of  earth 

Than  the  cheap  fire  that  lights  my  hearth ! 

But  now  glad  thoughts  and  holy  pour 

Into  my  heart,  as  once  a  year 

To  San  Miniato's  open  door, 

In  long  procession,  chanting  clear, 

Through  slopes  of  sun,  through  shadows  hoar, 

The  coupled  monks  slow-climbing  sing, 

And  like  a  golden  censer  swing 

From  rear  to  front,  from  front  to  rear 

Their  alternating  bursts  of  praise, 

Till  the  roof's  fading  seraphs  gaze 

Down  through  an  odorous  mist,  that  crawls 

Lingeringly  up  the  darkened  walls, 

And  the  dim  arches,  silent  long, 

Are  startled  with  triumphant  song. 

I  wrote  yesterday  that  the  sea  still  rimmed 
our  prosy  lives  with  mystery  and  conjecture. 
But  one  is  shut  up  on  shipboard  like  Mon- 
taigne in  his  tower,  with  nothing  to  do  but 
to  review  his  own  thoughts  and  contradict 


166 


AT  SEA. 


himself.  Dire,  redire,  et  me  contredire^  will  be 
the  staple  of  my  journal  till  I  see  land.  I  say 
nothing  of  such  matters  as  the  montagna  bruna 
on  which  Ulysses  wrecked ;  but  since  the  six- 
teenth century  could  any  man  reasonably  hope 
to  stumble  on  one  of  those  wonders  which 
were  cheap  as  dirt  in  the  days  of  St.  Saga  ? 
Faustus,  Don  Juan,  and  Tanhaiiser  are  the 
last  ghosts  of  legend,  that  lingered  almost  till 
the  Gallic  cock-crow  of  universal  enlighten- 
ment and  disillusion.  The  Public  School  has 
done  for  Imagination.  What  shall  I  see  in 
Outre-Mer,  or  on  the  way  thither,  but  what 
can  be  seen  with  eyes  ?  To  be  sure,  I  stick 
by  the  sea-serpent,  and  would  fain  believe  that 
science  has  scotched,  not  killed,  him.  Nor  is 
he  to  be  lightly  given  up,  for,  like  the  old 
Scandinavian  snake,  he  binds  together  for  us 
the  two  hemispheres  of  Past  and  Present, 
of  Belief  and  Science.  He  is  the  link  which 
knits  us  seaboard  Yankees  with  our  Norse 
progenitors,  interpreting  between  the  age  of 
the  dragon  and  that  of  the  railroad-train. 


AT  SEA, 


167 


We  have  made  ducks  and  drakes  of  that 
large  estate  of  wonder  and  delight  bequeathed 
to  us  by  ancestral  vikings,  and  this  alone  re- 
mains to  us  unthrift  heirs  of  Linn. 

I  feel  an  undefined  respect  for  a  man  who 
has  seen  the  sea-serpent.  He  is  to  his  brother- 
fishers  what  the  poet  is  to  his  fellow-men. 
Where  they  have  seen  nothing  better  than  a 
school  of  horse-mackerel,  or  the  idle  coils  of 
ocean  around  Half-way  Rock,  he  has  caught 
authentic  glimpses  of  the  withdrawing  mantle- 
hem  of  the  Edda  age.  I  care  not  for  the 
Aionster  himself.  It  is  not  the  thing,  but  the 
belief  in  the  thing,  that  is  dear  to  me.  May 
it  be  long  before  Professor  Owen  is  comforted 
with  the  sight  of  his  unfleshed  vertebrae,  long 
before  they  stretch  many  a  rood  behind  Kim- 
ball's or  Barnum's  glass,  reflected  in  the  shal- 
low orbs  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Public,  which  stare, 
but  see  not !  When  we  read  that  Captain 
Spalding,  of  the  pink-stern  Three  Pollies,  has 
beheld  him  rushing  through  the  brine  like  an 
mfijnite  series  of  bewitched  mackerel-casks,  we 


168  •         AT  SEA. 


feel  that  the  mystery  of  old  Ocean,  at  least, 
has  not  yet  been  sounded,  —  that  Faith  and 
Awe  survive  there  unevaporate.  I  once 
ventured  the  horse-mackerel  theory  to  an  old 
fisherman,  browner  than  a  tomcod.  "  Hos- 
mackril !  "  he  exclaimed  indignantly,  "  hos- 
mackril  be  —  "  (here  he  used  a  phrase  com- 
monly indicated  in  laical  literature  by  the  same 
sign  which  serves  for  Doctorate  in  Divinity,) 
"  don't  yer  spose  I  know  a  hos-mackril  ? " 
The  intonation  of  that  would  have  si- 

lenced Professor  Monkbarns  Owen  with  his 
provoking  phoca  forever.  What  if  one  should 
ask  him  if  he  knew  a  trilobite  ? 

The  fault  of  modern  travellers  is,  that  they 
see  nothing  out  of  sight.  They  talk  of  eocene 
periods  and  tertiary  formations,  and  tell  us 
how  the  world  looked  to  the  plesiosaur.  They 
take  science  (or  nescience)  with  them,  instead 
of  that  soul  of  generous  trust  their  elders  had. 
All  their  senses  are  sceptics  and  doubters, 
materialists  reporting  things  for  other  scep- 
tics to  doubt  still  further  upon.    Nature  be* 


AT  SEA. 


169 


comes  a  reluctant  witness  upon  the  stand, 
badgered  with  geologist  hammers  and  phials 
of  acid.  There  have  been  no  travellers  since 
those  included  in  Hakluyt  and  Purchas,  ex- 
cept Martin,  perhaps,  who  saw  an  inch  or  two 
into  the  invisible  at  the  Orkneys.  We  have 
peripatetic  lecturers,  but  no  more  travellers. 
Travellers'  stories  are  no  longer  proverbial. 
We  have  picked  nearly  every  apple  (wormy 
or  otherwise)  from  the  world's  tree  of  knowl- 
edge, and  that  without  an  Eve  to  tempt  us. 
Two  or  three  have  hitherto  hung  luckily  be- 
yond reach  on  a  lofty  bough  shadowing  the 
interior  of  Africa,  but  there  is  a  German  Doc- 
tor at  this  very  moment  pelting  at  them  with 
sticks  and  stones.  It  may  be  only  next  week, 
and  these  too,  bitten  by  geographers  and  ge- 
ologists, will  be  thrown  away. 

Analysis  is  carried  into  everything.  Even 
Deity  is  subjected  to  chemic  tests.  We  must 
have  exact  knowledge,  a  cabinet  stuck  full  of 
fact^-  pressed,  dried,  or  preserved  in  spirits, 
instead  of  the  large,  vague  world  our  fathers 

8 


170 


AT  SEA. 


had.  With  them  science  was  poetry ;  with 
us,  poetry  is  science.  Our  modern  Eden  is 
a  hortus  siccus.  Tourists  defraud  rather  than 
enrich  us.  They  have  not  that  sense  of  aes- 
thetic proportion  which  characterized  the  elder 
traveller.  Earth  is  no  longer  the  fine  work 
of  art  it  was,  for  nothing  is  left  to  the  imagi- 
nation. Job  Hortop,  arrived  at  the  height 
of  the  Bermudas,  thinks  it  full  time  to  indulge 
us  in  a  merman.  Nay,  there  is  a  story  told 
by  Webster,  in  his  "  Witchcraft,"  of  a  mer- 
man with  a  mitre,  who,  on  being  sent  back  to 
his  watery  diocese  of  finland,  made  what  ad- 
vances he  could  toward  an  episcopal  benedic- 
tion by  bowing  his  head  thrice.  Doubtless 
he  had  been  consecrated  by  St.  Antony  of 
Padua.  A  dumb  bishop  would  be  sometimes 
no  unpleasant  phenomenon,  by  the  way.  Sir 
John  Hawkins  is  not  satisfied  with  telling  us 
about  the  merely  sensual  Canaries,  but  is  gen- 
erous enough  to  throw  us  in  a  handful  of 
" certain  flitting  islands"  to  boot.  Henry 
Hawkes  describes  the  visible  Mexican  cities, 


AT  SEA. 


171 


and  then  is  not  so  frugal  but  that  he  can  give 
us  a  few  invisible  ones.  Thus  do  these  gen- 
erous ancient  mariners  make  children  of  us 
again.  Their  successors  show  us  an  earth 
effete  and  past  bearing,  tracing  out  with  the 
eyes  of  industrious  fleas  every  wrinkle  and 
crowfoot. 

The  journals  of  the  elder  navigators  are 
prose  Odysseys.  The  geographies  of  our  an- 
cestors were  works  of  fancy  and  imagination. 
They  read  poems  where  we  yawn  over  items. 
Their  world  was  a  huge  wonder-horn,  ex- 
haustless  as  that  which  Thor  strove  to  drain. 
Ours  would  scarce  quench  the  small  thirst  of 
a  bee.  No  modern  voyager  brings  back  the 
magical  foundation-stones  of  a  Tempest.  No 
Marco  Polo,  traversing  the  desert  beyond  the 
city  of  Lok,  would  tell  of  things  able  to  inspire 
the  mind  of  Milton  with 

"  Calling  shapes  and  beckoning  shadows  dire, 
And  airy  tongues  that  syllable  men's  names 
On  sands  and  shores  and  desert  wildernesses." 

It  was  easy  enough  to  believe  the  story  of 


172 


AT  SEA. 


Dante,  when  two  thirds  of  even  the  upper- 
world  were  yet  untraversed  and  unmapped. 
With  every  step  of  the  recent  traveller  our 
inheritance  of  the  wonderful  is  diminished. 
Those  beautifully  pictured  notes  of  the  Possi- 
ble are  redeemed  at  a  ruinous  discount  in  the 
hard  and  cumbrous  coin  of  the  Actual.  How 
are  we  not  defrauded  and  impoverished?  Does 
California  vie  with  El  Dorado  ?  or  are  Bruce's 
Abyssinian  kings  a  set-off  for  Prester  John  ? 
A  bird  in  the  bush  is  worth  two  in  the  hand. 
And  if  the  philosophers  have  not  even  yet 
been  able  to  agree  whether  the  world  has  any 
existence  independent  of  ourselves,  how  do  we 
not  gain  a  loss  in  every  addition  to  the  cata- 
logue of  Vulgar  Errors  ?  Where  are  the 
fishes  which  nidificated  in  trees  ?  Where  the 
monopodes  sheltering  themselves  from  the  sun 
beneath  their  single  umbrella-like  foot,  —  um- 
brella-like in  everything  but  the  fatal  neces- 
sity of  being  borrowed  ?  Where  the  Acephali, 
with  whom  Herodotus,  in  a  kind  of  ecstasy, 
wound  up  his  climax  of  men  with  abnorma] 


AT  SEA, 


173 


top-pieces  ?  Where  the  Roc  whose  eggs  are 
possibly  boulders,  needing  no  far-fetched  the- 
ory of  glacier  or  iceberg  to  account  for  them  ? 
Where  the  tails  of  the  men  of  Kent?  Where 
the  no  legs  of  the  bird  of  paradise  ?  Where 
the  Unicorn,  with  that  single  horn  of  his,  sov- 
ereign against  all  manner  of  poisons  ?  Where 
the  Fountain  of  Youth  ?  Where  that  Thes- 
salian  spring,  which,  without  cost  to  the  coun- 
try, convicted  and  punished  perjurers  ?  Where 
the  Amazons  of  Orellana  ?  All  these,  and  a 
thousand  other  varieties,  we  have  lost,  and 
have  got  nothing  instead  of  them.  And  those 
who  have  robbed  us  of  them  have  stolen  that 
which  not  enriches  themselves.  It  is  so  much 
wealth  cast  into  the  sea  beyond  all  approach 
of  diving-bells.  We  owe  no  thanks  to  Mr.  J. 
E.  Worcester,  whose  Geography  we  studied 
enforcedly  at  school.  Yet  even  he  had  his 
relentings,  and  in  some  softer  moment  vouch- 
safed us  a  fine,  inspiring  print  of  the  Mael- 
strom, answerable  to  the  twenty-four  mile  di- 
ameter of  its  suction.    Year  by  year,  more 


174  AT  SEA, 

and  more  of  the  world  gets  disenchanted. 
Even  the  icy  privacy  of  the  arctic  and  an- 
tarctic circles  is  invaded.  Our  youth  are  no 
longer  ingenious,  as  indeed  no  ingenuity  is 
demanded  of  them.  Everything  is  accounted 
for,  everything  cut  and  dried,  and  the  world 
may  be  put  together  as  easily  as  the  fragments 
of  a  dissected  map.  The  Mysterious  bounds 
nothing  now  on  the  North,  South,  East,  or 
West.  We  have  played  Jack  Horner  with 
our  earth,  till  there  is  never  a  plum  left  in 
it. 


IN  THE  MEDITERRANEAN. 


THE  first  sight  of  a  shore  so  historical  as 
that  of  Europe  gives  an  American  a 
strange  thrill.  What  we  always  feel  the  artis- 
tic want  of  at  home,  is  background.  It  is  all 
idle  to  say  we  are  Englishmen,  and  that  Eng- 
lish history  is  ours  too.  It  is  precisely  in  this 
that  we  are  not  Englishmen,  inasmuch  as  we 
only  possess  their  history  through  our  minds, 
and  not  by  life-long  association  with  a  spot  and 
an  idea  we  call  England.  History  without  the 
soil  it  grew  in,  is  more  instructive  than  inspir- 
ing,—  an  acquisition,  and  not  an  inheritance. 
It  is  laid  away  in  our  memories,  and  does  not 
run  in  our  veins.  Surely,  in  all  that  concerns 
esthetics,  Europeans  have  us  at  an  immense 
advantage.  They  start  at  a  point  which  we 
arrive  at  after  weary  years,  for  literature  is 
not  shut  up  in  books,  nor  art  in  galleries : 


176      IN  THE  MEDITERRANEAN. 


both  are  taken  in  by  unconscious  absorption 
through  the  finer  pores  of  mind  and  character 
in  the  atmosphere  of  society.  We  are  not  yet 
out  of  our  Crusoe-hood,  and  must  make  our 
own  tools  as  best  we  may.  Yet  I  think  we 
shall  find  the  good  of  it  one  of  these  days,  in 
being  thrown  back  more  wholly  on  nature  ; 
and  our  literature,  when  we  have  learned  to 
feel  our  own  strength,  and  to  respect  our  own 
thought  because  it  is  ours,  and  not  because 
the  European  Mrs.  Grundy  agrees  with  it, 
will  have  a  fresh  flavor  and  a  strong  body 
that  will  recommend  it,  especially  as  what 
we  import  is  watered  more  and  more  liberally 
with  every  vintage. 

My  first  glimpse  of  Europe  was  the  shore 
of  Spain.  Since  we  got  into  the  Mediterra- 
nean, we  have  been  becalmed  for  some  days 
within  easy  view  of  it.  All  along  are  fine 
mountains,  brown  all  day,  and  with  a  bloom 
^n  them  at  sunset  like  that  of  a  ripe  plum. 
Here  and  there  at  their  fe3t  little  white  towns 
are  sprinkled  along  the  edge  of  the  water,  like 


IN  THE  MEDITERRANEAN.  177 


the  grains  of  rice  dropped  by  the  princess  in 
the  story.  Sometimes  we  see  larger  buildings 
on  the  mountain  slopes,  probably  convents. 
I  sit  and  wonder  whether  the  farther  peaks 
may  not  be  the  Sierra  Morena  (the  rusty 
saw)  of  Don  Quixote.  I  resolve  that  they 
shall  be,  and  am  content.  Surely  latitude 
and  longitude  never  showed  me  any  particu- 
lar respect,  that  I  should  be  over-scrupulous 
with  them. 

But  after  all,  Nature,  though  she  may  be 
more  beautiful,  is  nowhere  so  entertaining  as 
in  man,  and  the  best  thing  I  have  seen  and 
learned  at  sea  is  our  Chief  Mate.  My  first 
acquaintance  with  him  was  made  over  my 
knife,  which  he  asked  to  look  at,  and,  after 
a  critical  examination,  handed  back  to  me, 
saying,  "  I  should  n't  wonder  if  that  'ere  was 
a  good  piece  o'  stuff."  Since  then  he  has 
transferred  a  part  of  his  regard  for  my  knife 
to  its  owner.  I  like  folks  who  like  an  honest 
bit  of  steel,  and  take  no  interest  whatever  in 
"  your  Raphaels,  Correggios,  and  stuff."  There 

8*  L 


178       IN  THE  MEDITERRANEAN. 


is  always  more  than  the  average  human  na- 
ture in  a  man  who  has  a  hearty  sympathy  with 
iron.  It  is  a  manly  metal,  with  no  sordid 
associations  like  gold  and  silver.  My  sailor 
fully  came  up  to  my  expectation  on  further 
acquaintance.  He  might  well  be  called  an 
old  salt  who  had  been  wrecked  on  Spitzbergen 
before  I  was  born.  He  was  not  an  Amer- 
ican, but  I  should  never  have  guessed  it  by 
his  speech,  which  was  the  purest  Cape  Cod, 
and  I  reckon  myself  a  good  taster  of  dialects. 
Nor  was  he  less  Americanized  in  all  his 
thoughts  and  feelings,  a  singular  proof  of  the 
ease  with  which  our  omnivorous  country 
assimilates  foreign  matter,  provided  it  be 
Protestant,  for  he  was  a  man  ere  he  became 
an  American  citizen.  He  used  to  walk  the 
deck  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets,  in  seem- 
ing abstraction,  but  nothing  escaped  his  eye. 
How  he  saw,  I  could  never  make  out,  though 
I  had  a  theory  that  it  was  with  his  elbows. 
After  he  had  taken  me  (or  my  knife)  into 
hir»  confidence,  he  took  care  that  I  should  see 


IN  THE  MEDITERRANEAN.  179 

whatever  he  deemed  of  interest  to  a  lands- 
man. Without  looking  up,  he  would  say, 
suddenly,  "  Ther 's  a  whale  blowin'  clearn 
up  to  win'ard,"  or,  "  Them 's  porpises  to 
leeward :  that  means  change  o'  wind."  He 
is  as  impervious  to  cold  as  a  polar  bear,  and 
paces  the  deck  during  his  watch  much  as 
one  of  those  yellow  hummocks  goes  slumping 
up  and  down  his  cage.  On  the  Atlantic,  if 
the  wind  blew  a  gale  from  the  northeast, 
and  it  was  cold  as  an  English  summer,  he 
was  sure  to  turn  out  in  a  calico  shirt  and 
trousers,  his  furzy  brown  chest  half  bare, 
and  slippers,  without  stockings.  But  lest  you 
might  fancy  this  to  have  chanced  by  defect 
of  wardrobe,  he  comes  out  in  a  monstrous 
pea-jacket  here  in  the  Mediterranean,  when 
the  evening  is  so  hot  that  Adam  would  have 
been  glad  to  leave  off  his  fig-leaves.  "  It 's 
a  kind  o'  damp  and  unwholesome  in  these 
ere  waters,"  he  says,  evidently  regarding  the 
Midland  Sea  as  a  vile  standing  pool,  in  com- 
parison with  the  bluff  ocean.    At  meals  he  is 


180      IAT  THE  MEDITERRANEAN. 

superb,  not  only  for  his  strengths,  but  his 
weaknesses.  He  has  some  how  or  other  come 
to  think  me  a  wag,  and  if  I  ask  him  to  pass 
the  butter,  detects  an  occult  joke,  and  laughs 
as  much  as  is  proper  for  a  mate.  For  you 
must  know  that  our  social  hierarchy  on  ship- 
board is  precise,  and  the  second  mate,  were 
he  present,  would  only  laugh  half  as  much  as 
the  first.  Mr.  X.  always  combs  his  hair,  and 
works  himself  into  a  black  frock-coat  (on 
Sundays  he  adds  a  waistcoat)  before  he  comes 
to  meals,  sacrificing  himself  nobly  and  pain- 
fully to  the  social  proprieties.  The  second 
mate,  on  the  other  hand,  who  eats  after  us, 
enjoys  the  privilege  of  shirt-sleeves,  and  is,  I 
think,  the  happier  man  of  the  two.  We  do 
not  have  seats  above  and  below  the  salt,  as 
in  old  time,  but  above  and  below  the  white 
sugar.  Mr.  X.  always  takes  brown  sugar, 
and  it  is  delightful  to  see  how  he  ignores  the 
existence  of  certain  delicates  which  he  con- 
siders above  his  grade,  tipping  his  head  on 
one  side  with  an  air  of  abstraction,  so  that  he 


IN  THE  MEDITERRANEAN  181 


may  seem  not  to  deny  himself,  but  to  omit 
helping  himself  from  inadvertence  or  absence 
of  mind.  At  such  times  he  wrinkles  his  fore- 
head in  a  peculiar  manner,  inscrutable  at  first 
as  a  cuneiform  inscription,  but  as  easily  read 
after  you  once  get  the  key.  The  sense  of  it 
is  something  like  this :  "  I,  X.,  know  my 
place,  a  height  of  wisdom  attained  by  few. 
Whatever  you  may  think,  I  do  not  see  that 
currant  jelly,  nor  that  preserved  grape.  Es- 
pecially, a  kind  Providence  has  made  me  blind 
to  bowls  of  white  sugar,  and  deaf  to  the  pop 
of  champagne  corks.  It  is  much  that  a  mer- 
ciful compensation  gives  me  a  sense  of  the 
dingier  hue  of  Havana,  and  the  muddier  gur- 
gle of  beer.  Are  there  potted  meats  ?  My 
physician  has  ordered  me  three  pounds  of 
minced  salt-junk  at  every  meal."  There  is 
such  a  thing,  you  know,  as  a  ship's  husband : 
X.  is  the  ship's  poor  relation. 

Ag- 1  have  said,  he  takes  also  a  below-the- 
white-sugar  interest  in  the  jokes,  laughing  by 
precise  point  of  compass,  just  as  he  would  lay 


182      IN  THE  MEDITERRANEAN. 

the  ship's  course,  all  yawing  being  out  of  the 
question  with  his  scrupulous  decorum  at  the 
helm.  Once  or  twice  I  have  got  the  better 
of  him,  and  touched  him  off  into  a  kind  of 
compromised  explosion,  like  that  of  damp 
fireworks,  that  splutter  and  simmer  a  little, 
and  then  go  out  with  painful  slowness  and 
occasional  relapses.  But  his  fuse  is  always 
of  the  unwillingest,  and  you  must  blow  your 
match,  and  touch  him  off  again  and  again 
with  the  same  joke.  Or  rather,  you  must 
magnetize  him  many  times  to  get  him  en 
rapport  with  a  jest.  This  once  accomplished, 
you  have  him,  and  one  bit  of  fun  will  last 
the  whole  voyage.  He  prefers  those  of  one 
syllable,  the  a-b  abs  of  humor.  The  gradual 
fattening  of  the  steward,  a  benevolent  mulatto 
with  whiskers  and  ear-rings,  who  looks  as  if 
he  had  been  meant  for  a  woman,  and  had 
become  a  man  by  accident,  as  in  some  of 
those  stories  of  the  elder  physiologists,  is  an 
abiding  topic  of  humorous  comment  with  Mr. 
X.     u  That  'ere  stooard,"  he  says,  with  a 


IN  THE  MEDITERRANEAN.  183 


brown  giin  like  what  you  might  fancy  on  the 
face  of  a  serious  and  aged  seal,  " 's  agittin'  as 
fat  's  a  porpis.  He  was  as  thin 's  a  shingle 
when  he  come  aboord  last  v'yge.  Them 
trousis  '11  bust  yit.  He  don't  darst  take  'em 
off  nights,  for  the  whole  ship's  company 
could  n't  git  him  into  'em  agin."  And  then 
he  turns  aside  to  enjoy  the  intensity  of  his 
emotion  by  himself,  and  you  hear  at  intervals 
lew  rumblings,  an  indigestion  of  laughter. 
He  tells  me  of  St.  Elmo's  fires,  MarvelFs 
corposants,  though  with  him  the  original 
corpos  santos  has  suffered  a  sea  change,  and 
turned  to  comepleasants,  pledges  of  fine  weath- 
er. I  shall  not  soon  find  a  pleasanter  com- 
panion. It  is  so  delightful  to  meet  a  man 
who  knows  just  what  you  do  not.  Nay,  I 
think  the  tired  mind  finds  something  in  plump 
ignorance  like  what  the  body  feels  in  cushiony 
moss.  Talk  of  the  sympathy  of  kindred  pur- 
suits !  It  is  the  sympathy  of  the  upper  and 
nether  millstones,  both  forever  grinding  the 
6ame  grist,  and  wearing  each  other  smooth. 


L84      IN  THE  MEDITERRANEAN. 


One  has  not  far  to  seek  for  book-nature,  artist- 
nature,  every  variety  of  superinduced  nature, 
in  short,  but  genuine  human-nature  is  hard  to 
find.  And  how  good  it  is  !  Wholesome  as 
a  potato,  fit  company  for  any  dish.  The 
freemasonry  of  cultivated  men  is  agreeable, 
but  artificial,  and  I  like  better  the  natural  grip 
with  which  manhood  recognizes  manhood. 

X.  has  one  good  story,  and  with  that  I  leave 
him,  wishing  him  with  all  my  heart  that  little 
inland  farm  at  last  which  is  his  calenture  as 
he  paces  the  windy  deck.  One  evening, 
when  the  clouds  looked  wild  and  whirling, 
I  asked  X.  if  it  was  coming  on  to  blow. 
"  No,  I  guess  not,"  said  he ;  "  bumby  the 
moon  '11  be  up,  and  scoff  away  that  'ere  loose 
stuff."  His  intonation  set  the  phrase  "  scoff 
away "  in  quotation-marks  as  plain  as  print. 
So  I  put  a  query  in  each  eye,  and  he  went 
on.  "  Ther'  was  a  Dutch  cappen  onct,  an' 
his  mate  come  to  him  in  the  cabin,  where  he 
sot  takin'  his  schnapps,  an'  says,  4  Cappen, 
it 's  agittin'  thick,  an'  looks  kin'  o'  squally  ; 


IN  THE  MEDITERRANEAN,  185 


hed  n't  we 's  good 's  shorten  sail  ?  '  1  Gimmy 
my  alminick,'  says  the  cappen.  So  he  looks 
at  it  a  spell,  an'  says  he,  6  The  moon 's  due 
in  less  'n  half  an  hour,  an'  she  '11  scoff  away 
ev'ythin'  clare  agin.'  So  the  mate  he  goes, 
an'  bumby  down  he  comes  agin,  an'  says, 
4  Cappen,  this  'ere 's  the  allfiredest,  power- 
fullest  moon  't  ever  you  did  see.  She 's 
scoffed  away  the  maintogallants'l,  an'  she 's 
to  work  on  the  foretops'l  now.  Guess  you 'd 
better  look  in  the  alminick  agin,  an'  fin'  out 
when  this  moon  sets.'  So  the  cappen  thought 
't  was  'bout  time  to  go  on  deck.  Dreadful 
slow  them  Dutch  cappens  be."  And  X. 
walked  away,  rumbling  inwardly,  like  the  rote 
of  the  sea  heard  afar. 

And  so  we  arrived  at  Malta.  Did  you  ever 
tear  of  one  of  those  eating-houses,  where,  for 
a  certain  fee,  the  guest  has  the  right  to  make 
one  thrust  with  a  fork  into  a  huge  pot,  in 
which  the  whole  dinner  is  bubbling,  getting 
perhaps  a  bit  of  boiled  meat,  or  a  potato,  or 
else  nothing?    Well,  when  the  great  caldron 


186       IN  THE  MEDITERRANEAN. 


of  war  is  seething,  and  the  nations  stand  round 
it  striving  to  fish  out  something  to  their  pur- 
pose from  the  mess,  Britannia  always  has  a 
great  advantage  in  her  trident.  Malta  is  one 
of  the  titbits  she  has  impaled  with  that  awful 
implement.  I  was  not  sorry  for  it,  when  I 
reached  my  clean  inn,  with  its  kindly  English 
landlady. 


ITALY. 

^  I  "\HE  impulse  which  sent  the  Edelmann 
JL  Storg  and  me  to  Subiaco  was  given 
something  like  two  thousand  years  ago.  Had 
we  not  seen  the  Ponte  Sant'  Antonio,  we  should 
not  have  gone  to  Subiaco  at  this  particular 
time  ;  and  had  the  Romans  been  worse  ma- 
sons, or  more  ignorant  of  hydrodynamics  than 
they  were,  we  should  never  have  seen  the 
Ponte  Sant'  Antonio.  But  first  we  went  to 
Tivoli,  —  two  carriage-loads  of  us,  a  very 
agreeable  mixture  of  English,  Scotch,  and 
Yankees,  —  on  Tuesday,  the  20th  April.  I 
shall  not  say  anything  about  Tivoli.  A 
water-fall  in  type  is  likely  to  be  a  trifle  stiff- 
ish.  Old  association  and  modern  beauty ; 
nature  and  artifice ;  worship  that  has  passed 
away  and  the  religion  that  abides  forever ; 


188 


ITALY. 


the  green  gush  of  the  deeper  torrent  and  the 
white  evanescence  of  innumerable  cascades, 
delicately  palpitant  as  a  fall  of  northern  lights ; 
the  descendants  of  Sabine  pigeons  flashing  up 
to  immemorial  dove-cots,  for  centuries  inac- 
cessible to  man,  trooping  with  noisy  rooks 
and  daws ;  the  fitful  roar  and  the  silently 
hovering  iris,  which,  borne  by  the  wind  across 
the  face  of  the  cliff,  transmutes  the  travertine 
to  momentary  opal,  and  whose  dimmer  ghost 
haunts  the  moonlight,  —  as  well  attempt  to 
describe  to  a  Papuan  savage  that  wondrous 
ode  of  Wordsworth  which  rouses  and  stirs  in 
the  soul  all  its  dormant  instincts  of  resur- 
rection as  with  a  sound  of  the  last  trumpet. 
No,  it  is  impossible.  Even  Byron's  pump 
sucks  sometimes,  and  gives  an  unpleasant  dry 
wheeze,  especially,  it  seems  to  me,  at  Terni. 
It  is  guide-book  poetry,  enthusiasm  manufac- 
tured by  the  yard,  which  the  hurried  traveller 
(John  and  Jonathan  are  always  in  a  hurry 
when  they  turn  peripatetics)  puts  on  when 
ne  has  not  a  rag  of  private  imagination  to 


ITALY. 


189 


cover  his  nakedness  withal.  It  must  be  a 
queer  kind  of  love  that  could  "  watch  mad- 
ness with  unalterable  mien,"  when  the  patient, 
whom  any  competent  physician  wTould  have 
ordered  into  a  strait-waistcoat  long  ago,  has 
shivered  himself  to  powder  down  a  precipice. 
But  there  is  no -madness  in  the  matter.  Veli- 
no  goes  over  in  his  full  senses,  and  knows  per- 
fectly well  that  he  shall  not  be  hurt,  that  his 
broken  fragments  will  reunite  more  glibly  than 
the  head  and  neck  of  Orrilo.  He  leaps  exult- 
ant, as  to  his  proper  doom  and  fulfilment,  and 
out  of  the  mere  waste  and  spray  of  his  glory 
the  god  of  sunshine  and  song  builds  over  the 
crowning  moment  of  his  destiny  a  triumphal 
arch  beyond  the  reach  of  time  and  of  decay. 
But  Milton  is  the  only  man  who  has  got  much 
poetry  out  of  a  cataract,  —  and  that  was  a 
cataract  in  his  eye. 

The  first  day  we  made  the  Griro,  coming 
back  to  a  merry  dinner  at  the  Sibilla  in  the 
evening.  Then  we  had  some  special  tea,  — 
for  the  Italians  think  tea-drinking  the  chief 


190 


ITALY. 


religious  observance  of  the  Inglesi,  —  and  then 
we  had  fifteen  pauls'  worth  of  illumination, 
which  wrought  a  sudden  change  in  the  scen- 
ery, like  those  that  seem  so  matter-of-course 
in  dreams,  turning  the  Claude  we  had  seen 
in  the  morning  into  a  kind  of  Piranesi-Rem- 
brandt.  The  illumination,  by  the  way,  which 
had  been  prefigured  to  us  by  the  enthusiastic 
Italian  who  conducted  it  as  something  second 
only  to  the  Grirandola,  turned  out  to  be  one 
blue-light  and  two  armfuls  of  straw. 

The  Edelmann  Storg  is  not  fond  of  pedes- 
trian locomotion,  —  nay,  I  have  even  some- 
times thought  that  he  looked  upon  the  inven- 
tion of  legs  as  a  private  and  personal  wrong 
done  to  himself.  I  am  quite  sure  that  he  in- 
wardly believes  them  to  have  been  a  conse- 
quence of  the  fall,  and  that  the  happier  Pre- 
Adamites  were  monopodes,  and  incapable  of 
any  but  a  vehicular  progression.  A  carriage, 
with  horses  and  driver  complete,  he  takes  to 
be  as  simple  a  production  of  nature  as  a  po- 
tato.   But  he  is  fond  of  sketching,  and  after 


ITALY. 


191 


breakfast,  on  the  beautiful  morning  of  Wed- 
nesday, the  21st,  I  persuaded  him  to  walk  out 
a  mile  or  two  and  see  a  fragment  of  aqueduct 
ruin.  It  is  a  single  glorious  arch,  buttressing 
the  mountain-side  upon  the  edge  of  a  sharp 
descent  to  the  valley  of  the  Anio.  The  old 
road  to  Subiaco  passes  under  it,  and  it  is 
crowned  by  a  crumbling  tower  built  in  the 
Middle  Ages  (whenever  that  was)  against  the 
Gaetani.  While  Storg  sketched,  I  clambered. 
Below  you,  where  the  valley  widens  greenly 
toward  other  mountains,  which  the  ripe  Ital- 
ian air  distances  with  a  bloom  like  that  on 
unplucked  grapes,  are  more  arches,  ossified 
arteries  of  what  was  once  the  heart  of  the 
world.  Storg's  sketch  was  highly  approved 
of  by  Leopoldo,  our  guide,  and  by  three  or 
four  peasants,  who,  being  on  their  way  to 
their  morning's  work  in  the  fields,  had,  of 
course,  nothing  in  particular  to  do,  and  stopped 
to  see  us  see  the  ruin.  Any  one  who  has 
remarked  how  grandly  the  Eomans  do  noth- 
ing will  be  slow  to  believe  them  an  effete 


192 


ITALY. 


race.  Their  style  is  as  the  colossal  to  all 
other,  and  the  name  of  Eternal  City  fits  Rome 
also,  because  time  is  of  no  account  in  it.  The 
Roman  always  waits  as  if  he  could  afford  it 
amply,  and  the  slow  centuries  move  quite  fast 
enough  for  him.  Time  is  to  other  races  the 
field  of  a  task-master,  which  they  must  pain- 
fully till ;  but  to  the  Roman  it  is  an  entailed 
estate,  which  he  enjoys  and  will  transmit. 
The  Neapolitan's  laziness  is  that  of  a  loafer ; 
the  Roman's  is  that  of  a  noble.  The  poor 
Anglo-Saxon  must  count  his  hours,  and  look 
twice  at  his  small  change  of  quarters  and  min- 
utes ;  but  the  Roman  spends  from  a  purse  of 
Fortunatus.  His  piccolo  quarto  d'ora  is  like 
his  grosso,  a  huge  piece  of  copper,  big  enough 
for  a  shield,  which  stands  only  for  a  half-dime 
of  our  money.  We  poor  fools  of  time  always 
irony  as  if  we  were  the  last  type  of  man,  the 
full  stop  wTith  which  Fate  was  closing  the  colo- 
phon of  her  volume,  —  as  if  wTe  had  just  read 
in  our  newspaper,  as  we  do  of  the  banks  on 
holidays,  The  world  will  close,  to-day  at 


ITALY. 


193 


twelve  o'clock,  an  hour  earlier  ..than  usual. 
But  the  Roman  is  still  an  Ancient,  with  a 
vast  future  before  him  to  tame  and  occupy. 
He  and  his  ox  and  his  plough  are  just  as  they 
were  in  Virgil's  time  or  Ennius's.  We  beat 
him  in  many  things  ;  but  in  the  impregnable 
fastness  of  his  great  rich  nature  he  defies  us. 

We  got  back  to  Tivoli,  —  Storg  affirming 
that  he  had  walked  fifteen  miles.  We  saw 
the  Temple  of  Cough,  which  is  not  the  Tem- 
ple of  Cough,  though  it  might  have  been  a 
votive  structure  put  up  by  some  Tiburtine 
Dr.  Wistar.  We  saw  the  villa  of  Mecsenas, 
which  is  not  the  villa  of  Mec£enas,  and  other 
equally  satisfactory  antiquities.  All  our  Eng- 
lish friends  sketched  the  Citadel,  of  course, 
and  one  enthusiast  attempted  a  likeness  of  the 
fall,  which  I  unhappily  mistook  afterward  for 
a  semblance  of  the  tail  of  one  of  the  horses 
on  the  Monte  Cavallo.  Then  we  went  to  the 
Villa  d' Este,  famous  on  Ariosto's  account, — 
and  which  Ariosto  never  saw.  But  the  lau- 
rels were  worthy  to  have  made  a  chaplet  for 
9  M 


194 


ITALY. 


him,  and  the  cypresses  and  the  views  were  as 
fine  as  if  he  had  seen  them  every  day  of  his 
life. 

Perhaps  something  I  learned  in  going  to  see 
one  of  the  gates  of  the  town  is  more  to  the 
purpose,  and  may  assist  one  in  erecting  the 
horoscope  of  Italia  Unita.  When  Leopoldo 
first  proposed  to  drag  me  through  the  mud  to 
view  this  interesting  piece  of  architecture,  I 
demurred.  But  as  he  was  very  earnest  about 
it,  and  as  one  seldom  fails  getting  at  a  bit 
of  character  by  submitting  to  one's  guide,  I 
yielded.  Arrived  at  the  spot,  he  put  me  at 
the  best  point  of  view,  and  said,  — 

"  Behold,  Lordship  !  " 

"  I  see  nothing  out  of  the  common,"  said  I. 

"  Lordship  is  kind  enough  here  to  look  at 
a  gate,  the  like  of  which  exists  not  in  all  Italy, 
nay,  in  the  whole  world,  —  I  speak  not  of 
England,"  for  he  thought  me  an  Inglese. 

"  I  am  not  blind,  Leopoldo  ;  where  is  the 
miracle  ?  " 

"  Here  we  dammed  up  the  waters  of  the 


ITALY. 


195 


A.nio,  first  by  artifice  conducted  to  this  spot, 
and  letting  them  out  upon  the  Romans,  who 
stood  besieging  the  town,  drowned  almost  a 
whole  army  of  them.  (Lordship  conceives  ?) 
They  suspected  nothing  till  they  found  them- 
selves all  torn  to  pieces  at  the  foot  of  the  hill 
yonder.  (Lordship  conceives  ?)  Eh !  per 
Bacco  !  we  watered  their  porridge  for  them." 

Leopoldo  used  we  as  Lord  Buchan  did  I9 
meaning  any  of  his  ancestors. 

"  But  tell  me  a  little,  Leopoldo,  how  many 
years  is  it  since  this  happened  ?  " 

"  Non  saprei,  signoria ;  it  was  in  the  an- 
tiquest  times,  certainly ;  but  the  Romans 
never  come  to  our  Fair,  that  we  don't  have 
blows  about  it,  and  perhaps  a  stab  or  two. 
Lordship  understands  ?  " 

I  was  quite  repaid  for  my  pilgrimage.  I 
think  I  understand  Italian  politics  better  for 
hearing  Leopoldo  speak  of  the  Romans,  whose 
great  dome  is  in  full  sight  of  Tivoli,  as  a  for- 
eign nation.  But  what  perennial  boyhood  the 
wnole  story  indicates  ! 


196 


ITALY. 


Storg's  sketch  of  the  morning's  ruin  was 
so  successful  that  I  seduced  him  into  a  new 
expedition  to  the  Ponte  Sant'  Antonio,  an- 
other aqueduct  arch  about  eight  miles  off. 
This  was  for  the  afternoon,  and  I  succeeded 
the  more  easily,  as  we  were  to  go  on  horse- 
back. So  I  told  Leopoldo  to  be  at  the  gate 
of  the  Villa  of  Hadrian,  at  three  o'clock,  with 
three  horses.  Leopoldo's  face,  when  I  said 
three,  was  worth  seeing  ;  for  the  poor  fellow 
had  counted  on  nothing  more  than  trotting 
beside  our  horses  for  sixteen  miles,  and  get- 
ting half  a  dollar  in  the  evening.  Between 
doubt  and  hope,  his  face  seemed  to  exude  a 
kind  of  oil,  which  made  it  shine  externally, 
after  having  first  lubricated  all  the  muscles 
inwardly. 

"  With  three  horses,  Lordship  ?  " 

"Yes,  three." 

"  Lordship  is  very  sagacious.  With  three 
horses  they  go  much  quicker.  It  is  finished, 
then,  and  they  will  have  the  kindness  to  find 
me  at  the  gate  with  the  beasts,  at  three  o'clock 
precisely." 


ITALY. 


197 


Leopoldo  and  I  had  compromised  upon  the 
term  "  Lordship."  He  had  found  me  in  the 
morning  celebrating  due  rites  before  the  Sib- 
yl's Temple  with  strange  incense  of  the  ni- 
cotian herb,  and  had  marked  me  for  his  prey. 
At  the  very  high  tide  of  sentiment,  when  the 
traveller  lies  with  oyster-like  openness  in  the 
soft  ooze  of  reverie,  do  these  parasitic  crabs, 
the  ciceroni,  insert  themselves  as  his  insepa- 
rable bosom  companions.  Unhappy  bivalve, 
lying  so  softly  between  thy  two  shells,  of  the 
actual  and  the  possible,  the  one  sustaining, 
the  other  widening  above  thee,  till,  oblivious 
of  native  mud,  thou  fanciest  thyself  a  proper 
citizen  only  of  the  illimitable  ocean  which 
floods  thee,  —  there  is  no  escape  !  Vain  are 
thy  poor  crustaceous  efforts  at  self-isolation. 
The  foe  henceforth  is  a  part  of  thy  conscious- 
ness, thy  landscape,  and  thyself,  happy  only 
if  that  irritation  breed  in  thee  the  pearl  of 
patience  and  of  voluntary  abstraction. 

"  Excellency  wants  a  guide,  very  expe- 
rienced, who  has  conducted  with  great  mutual 
satisfaction  many  of  his  noble  compatriots." 


198 


ITALY. 


Puff,  puff,  and  an  attempt  at  looking  as  if 
I  did  not  see  him. 

"  Excellency  will  deign  to  look  at  my  book 
of  testimonials.  When  we  return,  Excellency 
will  add  his  own.' 

Puff,  puff. 

"  Excellency  regards  the  cascade,  prceeeps 
Anio,  as  the  good  Horatius  called  it." 

I  thought  of  the  dissolve  frigus  of  the  land- 
lord in  Roderick  Random,  and  could  not  help 
smiling.    Leopoldo  saw  his  advantage. 

"  Excellency  will  find  Leopoldo,  when  he 
shall  choose  to  be  ready." 

"  But  I  will  positively  not  be,  called  Excel- 
lency. I  am  not  an  ambassador,  nor  a  very 
eminent  Christian,  and  the  phrase  annoys 
me." 

"  To  be  sure,  Excell —  Lordship." 

"  I  am  an  American." 

"  Certainly,  an  American,  Lordship,"  —  as 
if  that  settled  the  matter  entirely.  If  I  had 
told  him  I  was  a  Caffre,  it  wTould  have  been 
just  as  clear  to  him.    He  surrendered  the 


ITALY. 


199 


"  Excellency,' '  but  on  general  principles  of 
human  nature,  I  suppose,  would  not  come  a 
step  lower  than  "  Lordship."  So  we  compro- 
mised on  that. — P.  S.  It  is  wonderful  how 
soon  a  republican  ear  reconciles  itself  with 
syllables  of  this  description.  I  think  citizen 
would  find  greater  difficulties  in  the  way  of 
its  naturalization,  and  as  for  brother  —  ah ! 
well,  in  a  Christian  sense,  certainly. 

Three  o'clock  found  us  at  the  Villa  of  Ha- 
drian. We  had  explored  that  incomparable 
ruin,  and  consecrated  it,  in  the  Homeric  and 
Anglo-Saxon  manner,  by  eating  and  drinking. 
Some  of  us  sat  in  the  shadow  of  one  of  the 
great  walls,  fitter  for  a  city  than  a  palace, 
over  which  a  Nile  of  ivy,  gushing  from  one 
narrow  source,  spread  itself  in  widening  in- 
undations.   A  happy  few  listened  to  stories 

of  Bagdad  from  Mrs.  ,  whose  silver  hair 

gleamed,  a  palpable  anachronism,  like  a  snow- 
fall in  May,  over  that  ever-youthful  face, 
where  the  few  sadder  lines  seemed  but  the 
signature  of  Age  to  a  deed  of  quitclaim  and 


200 


ITALY. 


release.  Dear  Tito,  thaf  exemplary  traveller 
who  never  lost  a  day,  had  come  back  from 
renewed  explorations,  convinced  by  the  elo- 
quent custode  that  Serapeion  was  the  name 
of  an  officer  in  the  Praetorian  Guard.  I  was 
explaining,  in  addition,  that  Naumaehia,  in 
the  Greek  tongue,  signified  a  place  artificially 
drained,  when  the  horses  were  announced. 

This  put  me  to  reflection.  I  felt,  perhaps, 
a  little  as  Mazeppa  must,  when  told  that  his 
steed  was  at  the  door.  For  several  years  I 
had  not  been  on  the  back  of  a  horse,  and  was 
it  not  more  than  likely  that  these  mountains 
might  produce  a  yet  more  refractory  breed 
of  these  ferecious  animals  than  common  ? 
Who  could  tell  the  effect  of  grazing  on  a 
volcanic  soil  like  that  hereabout  ?  I  had 
vague  recollections  that  the  saddle  nullified 
the  laws  governing  the  impulsion  of  inert 
bodies,  exacerbating  the  centrifugal  forces 
into  a  virulent  activity,  and  proportionally 
narcotizing  the  centripetal.  The  phrase  ratio 
proportioned  to  the  squares  of  the  distances 


ITALY. 


201 


impressed  me  with  an  awe  which  explained 
to  me  how  the  laws  of  nature  had  been  of 
old  personified  and  worshipped.  Meditating 
these  things,  I  walked  with  a  cheerful  aspect 
to  the  gate,  where  my  saddled  and  bridled 
martyrdom  awaited  me. 

"  Eceomi  qua  /"  said  Leopoldo,  hilariously. 
"  Gentlemen  will  be  good  enough  to  select 
from  the  three  best  beasts  in  Tivoli." 

"  O,  this  one  will  serve  me  as  well  as 
any,"  said  I,  with  an  air  of  indifference,  much 
as  I  have  seen  a  gentleman  help  himself  inad- 
vertently to  the  best  peach  in  the  dish.  I 
am  not  more  selfish  than  becomes  a  Christian 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  but  I  looked  on 
this  as  a  clear  case  of  tabula  in  naufragio^ 
and  had  noticed  that  the  animal  in  question 
had  that  tremulous  droop  of  the  lower  lip 
which  indicates  senility,  and  the  abdication  of 
the  wilder  propensities.  Moreover,  he  was 
the  only  one  provided  with  a  curb  bit,  or 
rather  with  two  huge  iron  levers  which  might 
almost  have  served  Archimedes  for  his  prob- 
9* 


202 


ITALY. 


lem.  Our  saddles  were  flat  cushions  covered 
with  leather,  brought  by  years  of  friction  to 
the  highest  state  of  polish.  Instead  of  a 
pommel,  a  perpendicular  stake,  about  ten 
inches  high,  rose  in  front,  which,  in  case  of 
a  stumble,  would  save  one's  brains,  at  the 
risk  of  certain  evisceration.  Behind,  a  glary 
slope  invited  me  constantly  to  slide  over  the 
horse's  tail.  The  selfish  prudence  of  my 
choice  had  well-nigh  proved  the  death  of 
me,  for  this  poor  old  brute,  with  that  anxi- 
ety to  oblige  a  forestiero  which  characterizes 
everybody  here,  could  never  make  up  his 
mind  which  of  his  four  paces  (and  he  had 
the  rudiments  of  four  —  walk,  trot,  rack,  and 
gallop)  would  be  most  agreeable  to  me.  The 
period  of  transition  is  always  unpleasant,  and 
it  was  all  transition.  He  treated  me  to  a 
hodge-podge  of  all  his  several  gaits  at  once. 
Saint  Vitus  was  the  only  patron  saint  I  could 
think  of.  My  head  jerked  one  way,  my  body 
another,  while  each  of  my  legs  became  a 
pendulum    vibrating    furiously,    one  always 


ITALY. 


203 


forward  while  the  other  was  back,  so  that  I 
had  all  the  appearance  and  all  the  labor  of 
going  afoot,  and  at  the  same  time  was  bumped 
within  an  inch  of  my  life.  Waterton's  al- 
ligator wras  nothing  to  it ;  it  was  like  riding 
a  hard- trotting  armadillo  bare-backed.  There 
is  a  species  of  equitation  peculiar  to  our  native 
land,  in  which  a  rail  from  the  nearest  fence, 
with  no  preliminary  incantation  of  Horse  and 
hattock!  is  converted  into  a  steed,  and  this 
alone  may  stand  the  comparison.  Storg  in 
the  mean  while  was  triumphantly  taking  the 
lead,  his  trousers  working  up  very  pleasantly 
above  his  knees,  an  insurrectionary  movement 
which  I  also  was  unable  to  suppress  in  my 
own.    I  could  bear  it  no  longer. 

"  Le-e-o-o-p-o-o-o-l-l-l-d-d-o-o-o  !  "  jolted  I. 

"  Command,  Lordship !  "  and  we  both  came 
to  a  stop. 

"  It  is  necessary  that  we  change  horses 
immediately,  or  I  shall  be  jelly." 

"  Certainly,  Lordship";  and  I  soon  had  the 
pathetic  satisfaction  of  seeing  him  subjected 


204 


ITALY. 


to  all  the  excruciating  experiments  that  had 
been  tried  upon  myself.  Fiat  experimentum 
in  corpore  vili,  thought  his  extempore  lord- 
ship, Christopher  Sly,  to  himself. 

Meanwhile  all  the  other  accessories  of  our 
ride  were  delicious.  It  was  a  clear,  cool  day, 
and  we  soon  left  the  high  road  tor  a  bridle- 
path along  the  side  of  the  mountain,  among 
gigantic  olive-trees,  said  to  be  five  hundred 
years  old,  and  which  had  certainly  employed 
all  their  time  in  getting  into  the  weirdest  and 
wonderfullest  shapes.  Clearly  in  this  green 
commonwealth  there  was  no  heavy  roller  of 
public  opinion  to  flatten  all  character  to  a 
lawn-like  uniformity.  Everything  was  indi- 
vidual and  eccentric.  And  there  was  some- 
thing fearfully  human,  too,  in  the  wildest 
contortions.  It  was  some  such  wood  that 
gave  Dante  the  hint  of  his  human  forest  in 
the  seventh  circle,  and  I  should  have  dreaded 
to  break  a  twig,  lest  I  should  hear  that  voice 
complaining, 

"  Perchk  mi  scerpi  ? 
Non  hai  tu  spirto  di  pictate  alcuno  %  " 


ITALY. 


205 


Our  path  lay  along  a  kind  of  terrace,  and  at 
e\ery  opening  we  had  glimpses  of  the  billowy 
Campagna,  with  the  great  dome  bulging  from 
its  rim,  while  on  our  right,  changing  ever  as 
we  rode,  the  Alban  mountain  showed  us  some- 
new  grace  of  that  sweeping  outline  peculiar 
to  volcanoes.  At  intervals  the  substructions, 
of  Roman  villas  would  crop  out  from  the  soil 
like  masses  of  rock,  and  deserving  to  rank  as 
a  geological  formation  by  themselves.  In- 
deed, in  gazing  into  these  dark  caverns,  one 
does  not  think  of  man  more  than  at  Staffa. 
Nature  has  adopted  these  fragments  of  a  race 
who  were  dear  to  her.  She  has  not  suffered 
these  bones  of  the  great  Queen  to  lack  due 
sepulchral  rites,  but  has  flung  over  them  the 
ceremonial  handfuls  of  earth,  and  every  year 
carefully  renews  the  garlands  of  memorial 
flowers.  Nay,  if  what  they  say  in  Rome  be 
true,  she  has  even  made  a  new  continent  of 
the  Colosseum,  and  given  it  a  flora  of  its 
own. 

At  length,  descending  a  little,  we  passed 


206 


ITALY. 


through  farm-yards  and  cultivated  fields, 
where,  from  Leopoldo's  conversations  with 
the  laborers,  we  discovered  that  he  himself 
did  not  know  the  way  for  which  he  had  un- 
dertaken to  be  guide.  However,  we  presently 
came  to  our  ruin,  and  very  noble  it  was.  The 
aqueduct  had  here  been  carried  across  a  deep 
gorge,  and  over  the  little  brook  which  wim- 
pled along  below  towered  an  arch,  as  a  bit 
of  Shakespeare  bestrides  the  exiguous  rill  of 
a  discourse  which  it  was  intended  to  ornament. 
The  only  human  habitation  in  sight  was  a 
little  casetta  on  the  top  of  a  neighboring  hill. 
What  else  of  man's  work  could  be  seen  was 
a  ruined  castle  of  the  Middle  Ages,  and,  far 
away  upon  the  horizon,  the  eternal  dome. 
A  valley  in  the  moon  could  scarce  have  been 
lonelier,  could  scarce  have  suggested  more 
strongly  the  feeling  of  preteriteness  and  ex- 
tinction. The  stream  below  did  not  seem  so 
much  to  sing  as  to  murmur  sadly,  Conclusion 
est;  periisti!  and  the  wind,  sighing  through 
the  arch,  answered,  Periisti!     Nor  was  the 


ITALY.  207 

silence  of  Monte  Cavi  without  meaning.  That 
cup,  once  full  of  fiery  wine,  in  which  it 
pledged  Vesuvius  and  iEtna  later  born,  was 
brimmed  with  innocent  water  now.  Adam 
came  upon  the  earth  too  late  to  see  the  glare 
of  its  last  orgy,  lighting  the  eyes  of  saurians 
in  the  reedy  Campagna  below.  I  almost  fan- 
cied I  could  hear  a  voice  like  that  which  cried 
to  the  Egyptian  pilot,  Crreat  Pan  is  dead! 
I  was  looking  into  the  dreary  socket  where 
once  glowed  the  eye  that  saw  the  whole  earth 
vassal.  Surely,  this  was  the  world's  autumn, 
and  I  could  hear  the  feet  of  Time  rustling 
through  the  wreck  of  races  and  dynasties, 
cheap  and  inconsiderable  as  fallen  leaves. 

But  a  guide  is  not  engaged  to  lead  one  into 
the  world  of  imagination.  He  is  as  deadly  to 
sentiment  as  a  sniff  of  hartshorn.  His  posi- 
tion is  a  false  one,  like  that  of  the  critic,  who 
is  supposed  to  know  everything,  and  expends 
himself  in  showing  that  he  does  not.  If  you 
should  ever  have  the  luck  to  attend  a  concert 
of  the  spheres,  under  the  protection  of  ai 


208 


ITALY. 


Italian  cicerone,  he  will  expect  you  to  listen 
to  him  rather  than  to  it.  He  will  say  :  "  HJc- 
co,  Signoria,  that  one  in  the  red  mantle  is 
Signor  Mars,  eh !  what  a  noblest  basso  is 
Signor  Mars  !  but  nothing  (Lordship  under- 
stands ?)  to  what  Signor  Saturn  used  to  be, 
(he  with  the  golden  belt,  Signorla^  only  his 
voice  is  in  ruins  now,  —  scarce  one  note  left 
upon  another  ;  but  Lordship  can  see  what  it 
was  by  the  remains,  Roman  remains,  Signoria, 
Roman  remains,  the  work  of  giants.  (Lordship 
understands  ?)  They  make  no  such  voices 
now.  Certainly,  Signor  Jupiter  (with  the 
yellow  tunic,  there)  is  a  brave  artist  and  a 
most  sincere  tenor ;  but  since  the  time  of  the 
Republic  "  (if  he  think  you  an  oscurante,  or 
since  the  French,  if  he  suspect  you  of  being 
the  least  red*)  "  we  have  no  more  good  sing- 
ing."   And  so  on. 

It  is  a  well-known  fact  to  all  persons  who 
are  in  the  habit  of  climbing  Jacob's-ladders, 
that,  if  any  one  speak  to  you  during  the  opera* 
tion,  the  fabric  collapses,  and  you  come  some 


ITALY. 


209 


what  uncomfortably  to  the  ground.  One  can 
be  hit  with  a  remark,  when  he  is  beyond  the 
reach  of  more  material  missiles.  Leopoldo 
saw  by  my  abstracted  manner  that  I  was  get- 
ting away  from  him,  and  I  was  the  only  vic- 
tim he  had  left,  for  Storg  was  making  a  sketch 
below.  So  he  hastened  to  fetch  me  down 
again. 

"  Nero  built  this  arch,  Lordship."  (He  did 
n't,  but  Nero  was  Leopoldo's  historical  scape- 
goat.) "  Lordship  sees  the  dome  ?  he  will 
deign  to  look  the  least  little  to  the  left  hand. 
Lordship  has  much  intelligence.  Well,  Nero 
always  did  thus.  His  works  always,  always, 
had  Rome  in  view." 

He  had  already  shown  me  two  ruins,  which 
he  ascribed  equally  to  Nero,  and  which  could 
only  have  seen  Rome  by  looking  through  a 
mountain.  However,  such  trifles  are  nothing 
to  an  accomplished  guide. 

I  remembered  his  quoting  Horace  in  the 
morning. 

"  Do  you  understand  Latin,  Leopoldo  ?  n 
m 


210 


ITALY. 


"  I  did  a  little  once,  Lordship.  I  went  to 
the  Jesuits'  school  at  Tivoli.  But  what  use 
of  Latin  to  a  poverino  like  me  ?  " 

"  Were  you  intended  for  the  church  ?  Why 
did  you  leave  the  school  ?  " 

"  Eh,  Lordship  !  "  and  one  of  those  shrugs 
which  might  mean  that  he  left  it  of  his  own 
free  will,  or  that  he  was  expelled  at  point  of 
toe.  He  added  some  contemptuous  phrase 
about  the  priests. 

"  But,  Leopoldo,  you  are  a  good  Catho- 
lic?" 

"  Eh,  Lordship,  who  knows  ?  A  man  is 
no  blinder  for  being  poor,  —  nay,  hunger 
sharpens  the  eyesight  sometimes.  The  car- 
dinals (their  Eminences  !)  tell  us  that  it  is 
good  to  be  poor,  and  that,  in  proportion  as 
we  lack  on  earth,  it  shall  be  made  up  to  us 
in  Paradise.  Now,  if  the  cardinals  (their 
Eminences  !)  believe  what  they  preach,  why 
do  they  want  to  ride  in  such  handsome  car- 
riages ?  " 

"  But  are  there  many  who  think  as  you 
do?" 


ITALY. 


211 


"  Ev  erybody,  Lordship,  but  a  few  women 
and  fools.  What  imports  it  what  the  fools 
think  ?  " 

An  immense  deal,  I  thought,  an  immense 
deal ;  for  of  what  material  is  public  opinion 
manufactured  ? 

"  Do  you  ever  go  to  church  ?  " 

"  Once  a  year,  Lordship,  at  Easter,  to  mass 
and  confession." 

"  Why  once  a  year  ?  " 

"  Because,  Lordship,  one  must  have  a  cer- 
tificate from  the  priest.  One  might  be  sent 
to  prison  else,  and  one  had  rather  go  to 
confession  than  to  jail.  Eh,  Lordship,  it  is  a 
porcheria." 

It  is  proper  to  add,  that  in  what  Leopoldo 
said  of  the  priests  he  was  not  speaking  of  his 
old  masters,  the  Jesuits.  One  never  hears 
anything  in  Italy  against  the  purity  of  their 
lives,  or  their  learning  and  ability,  though 
much  against  their  unscrupulousness.  Nor 
will  any  one  who  has  ever  enjoyed  the 
gentle  and  dignified  hospitality  of  the  Bene* 


212 


ITALY. 


dictines  be  ready  to  believe  any  evil  report 
of  them. 

By  this  time  Storg  had  finished  his  sketch, 
and  we  remounted  our  grazing  steeds.  They 
were  brisker  as  soon  as  their  noses  were 
turned  homeward,  and  we  did  the  eight  miles 
back  in  an  hour.  The  setting  sun  streamed 
through  and  among  the  Michael  Angelesque 
olive-trunks,  and,  through  the  long  colonnade 
of  the  bridle-path,  fired  the  scarlet  waistcoats 
and  bodices  of  homeward  villagers,  or  was 
sullenly  absorbed  in  the  long  black  cassock 
and  flapped  hat  of  a  priest,  who  courteously 
saluted  the  strangers.  Sometimes  a  mingled 
flock  of  sheep  and  goats  (as  if  they  had 
walked  out  of  one  of  Claude's  pictures) 
followed  the  shepherd,  who,  satyr-like,  in 
goat-skin  breeches,  sang  such  songs  as  were 
acceptable  before  Tubal  Cain  struck  out  the 
laws  of  musical  time  from  his  anvil.  The 
peasant,  in  his  ragged  brown  cloak,  or  with 
blue  jacket  hanging  from  the  left  shoulder, 
still  strides  Romanly,  —  incedit  rex,  —  and  his 


ITALY. 


213 


eyes  have  a  placid  grandeur,  inherited  from 
those  which  watched  the  glittering  snake  of 
the  Triumph,  as  it  undulated  along  the  Via 
Sacra.  By  his  side  moves  with  equal  pace 
his  woman-porter,  the  caryatid  of  a  vast 
entablature  of  household-stuff,  and  learning 
in  that  harsh  school  a  sinuous  poise  of  body 
and  a  security  of  step  beyond  the  highest 
snatch  of  the  posture-master. 

As  we  drew  near  Tivoli  the  earth  was 
fast  swinging  into  shadow.  The  darkening 
Campagna,  climbing  the  sides  of  the  nearer 
Monticelli  in  a  gray  belt  of  olive-spray,  rolled 
on  towards  the  blue  island  of  Soracte,  behind 
which  we  lost  the  sun.  Yes,  we  had  lost  the 
sun  ;  but  in  the  wTide  chimney  of  the  largest 
room  at  the  Sibilla  there  danced  madly, 
crackling  with  ilex  and  laurel,  a  bright  am- 
bassador from  Sunland,  Monsieur  Le  Feu, 
no  pinchbeck  substitute  for  his  royal  master. 
As  we  drew  our  chairs  up,  after  the  dinner 
due  to  Leopoldo's  forethought,  "  Behold," 
said  I,  "  the  Resident  of  the  great  king  near 


214 


ITALY. 


the  court  of  our  (this-day-created)  Hogan 
Moganships." 

We  sat  looking  into  the  fire,  as  it  wavered 
from  shining  shape  to  shape  of  unearthliest 
fantasy,  and  both  of  us,  no  doubt,  making 
out  old  faces  among  the  embers,  for  we  both 
said  together,  u  Let  us  talk  of  old  times." 

"  To  the  small  hours,"  said  the  Edelmann ; 
"and  instead  of  blundering  off  to  Torneo  to 
intrude  chatteringly  upon  the  midnight  pri- 
vacy of  Apollo,  let  us  promote  the  fire,  there, 
to  the  rank  of  sun  by  brevet,  and  have  a 
kind  of  undress  rehearsal  of  those  night  wan- 
derings of  his  here  upon  the  ample  stage  of 
the  hearth." 

So  we  wTent  through  the  whole  catalogue 
of  Do  you  remembers  ?  and  laughed  at  all  the 
old  stories,  so  dreary  to  an  outsider.  Then 
we  grew  pensive,  and  talked  of  the  empty 
sockets  in  that  golden  band  of  our  young 
friendship,  —  of  S.,  with  Grecian  front,  but 
unsevere,  and  Saxon  M.,  to  whom  laughter 
Was  as  natural  as  for  a  brook  to  ripple. 


ITALY. 


215 


But  Leopoldo  had  not  done  with  us.  We 
were  to  get  back  to  Rome  in  the  morning, 
and  to  that  end  must  make  a  treaty  with  the 
company  which  ran  the  Tivoli  diligence,  the 
next  day  not  being  the  regular  period  of 
departure  for  that  prodigious  structure.  We 
had  given  Leopoldo  twice  his  fee,  and,  setting 
a  mean  value  upon  our  capacities  in  propor- 
tion, he  expected  to  bag  .a  neat  percentage 
on  our  bargain.  Alas  !  he  had  made  a  false 
estimate  of  the  Arglo-Norman  mind,  which, 
capable  of  generosity  as  a  compliment  to 
itself,  will  stickle  for  the  dust  in  the  balance 
in  a  matter  of  business,  and  would  blush  at 
being  done  by  Mercury  himself. 

Accordingly,  at  about  nine  o'clock  there 
came  a  knock  at  the  door,  and,  answering 
our  Favorisca !  in  stalked  Leopoldo,  gravely 
followed  by  the  two  commissioners  of  the 
company. 

"  Behold  me  returned,  Lordship,  and  these 
men  are  the  Vetturini" 

Why  is  it  that  men  who  have  to  do  with 


216 


ITALY. 


horses  are  the  same  all  over  Christendom? 
Is  it  that  they  acquire  equine  characteristics, 
or  that  this  particular  mystery  is  magnetic  to 
certain  sorts  of  men  ?  Certainly  they  are 
marked  unmistakably,  and  these  two  worthies 
would  have  looked  perfectly  natural  in  York- 
shire or  Vermont.  They  were  just  alike,  — 
fortemque  Giyan,  fortemque  Cloanthurn,  —  and 
you  could  not  split  an  epithet  between  them. 
Simultaneously  they  threw  back  their  large 
overcoats,  and  displayed  spheroidal  figures, 
over  which  the  strongly  pronounced  stripes 
of  their  plaided  waistcoats  ran  like  parallels 
of  latitude  and  longitude  over  a  globe.  Si- 
multaneously they  took  off  their  hats  and  said, 
u  Your  servant,  gentlemen."  In  Italy  it  is 
always  necessary  to  make  a  combinazione  be- 
forehand about  even  the  most  customary  mat- 
ters, for  there  is  no  fixed  highest  price  foi 
anything.  For  a  minute  or  two  we  stood  reck- 
oning each  other's  forces.  Then  I  opened 
the  first  trench  writh  the  usual,  "  How  much 
do  you  wish  for  carrying  us  to  Rome  at  half 
oast  seven  to-morrow  morning  ?  " 


ITALY. 


217 


The  enemy  glanced,  one  at  the  other,  and 
the  result  of  this  ocular  witenagemot  was  that 
me  said,  "  Four  scudi,  gentlemen." 

The  Edelmann  Storg  took  his  cigar  from  his 
Aiouth  in  order  to  whistle,  and  made  a  rather 
oidecorous  allusion  to  four  gentlemen  in  the 
diplomatic  service  of  his  Majesty,  the  Prince 
of  the  Powers  of  the  Air. 

"  Whe-ew  !  quattro  diavoli !  "  said  he. 

uMacehe /"  exclaimed  I,  attempting  a  flank- 
movement,  "  I  had  rather  go  on  foot !  "  and 
threw  as  much  horror  into  my  face  ^s  if  a 
proposition  had  been  made  to  me  to  commit 
robbery,  murder,  and  arson  all  together. 

"  For  less  than  three  scudi  and  a  half  the 
diligence  parts  not  from  Tivoli  at  an  extraor- 
dinary hour,'1  said  the  stout  man,  with  an 
imperturbable  gravity,  intended  to  mask  his 
retreat,  and  to  make  it  seem  that  he  was  mak- 
ing the  same  proposal  as  at  first. 

Storg  saw  that  they  wravered,  and  opened 
upon  them  with  his  flying  artillery  of  sar- 
casm. 

10 


218 


ITALY. 


"  Do  you  take  us  for  Inglesi  ?  We  are 
very  well  here,  and  will  stay  at  the  Sibilla," 
he  sniffed  scornfully* 

"  How  much  will  Lordship  give  ?  "  (This 
was  showing  the  white  feather.) 

"  Fifteen  pauls,"  (a  scudo  and  a  half,) 
"  buonamano  included." 

"  It  is  impossible,  gentlemen  ;  for  less  than 
two  scudi  and  a  half  the  diligence  parts  not 
from  Tivoli  at  an  extraordinary  hour." 

"  Fifteen  pauls." 

"  Wjll  Lordship  give  two  scudi  ?  "  (with  a 
slight  flavor  of  mendicancy.) 

"  Fifteen  pauls,"  (growing  firm  as  we  saw 
them  waver.) 

"  Then,  gentlemen,  it  is  all  over  ;  it  is  im- 
possible, gentlemen." 

"  Very  good  ;  a  pleasant  evening  to  you  !  " 
and  they  bowed  themselves  out. 

As  soon  as  the  door  closed  behind  them, 
Leopoldo,  who  had  looked  on  in  more  and 
more  anxious  silence  as  the  chance  of  plunder 
was  whittled  slimmer  and  slimmer  by  the 


ITALY. 


219 


sharp  edges  of  the  parley,  saw  instantly  that 
it  was  for  his  interest  to  turn  state's  evidence 
against  his  accomplices. 

"  They  will  be  back  in  a  moment,"  he  said 
knowingly,  as  if  he  had  been  of  our  side  all 
along. 

"  Of  course;  we  are  aware  of  that."  —  It 
is  always  prudent  to  be  aware  of  everything 
in  travelling. 

And,  sure  enough,  in  five  minutes  re-enter 
the  stout  men,  as  gravely  as  if  everything  had 
been  thoroughly  settled,  and  ask  respectfully 
at  w^hat  hour  we  would  have  the  diligence. 

This  will  serve  as  a  specimen  of  Italian 
bargain-making.  They  do  not  feel  happy  if 
they  get  their  first  price.  So  easy  a  victory 
makes  them  sorry  they  had  not  asked  twice 
as  much,  and,  besides,  they  love  the  excite- 
ment of  the  contest.  I  have  seen  as  much 
debate  over  a  little  earthen  pot  (value  two 
cents)  on  the  Ponte  Vecchio,  in  Florence,  as 
would  have  served  for  an  operation  of  millions 
in  the  funds,  the  demand  and  the  offer  alter- 


220 


ITALY. 


Dating  so  rapidly  that  the  litigants  might  be 
supposed  to  be  playing  the  ancient  game  of 
morra.  It  is  a  part  of  the  universal  fondness 
for  gaming,  and  lotteries.  An  English  gentle- 
man once  asked  his  Italian  courier  how  large 
a  percentage  he  made  on  all  of  his  employ- 
er's money  which  passed  through  his  hands. 
"  About  five  per  cent ;  sometimes  more,  some- 
times less,"  was  the  answer.  "  Well,  I  will 
add  that  to  your  salary,  in  order  that  I  may 
be  rid  of  this  uncomfortable  feeling  of  being 
cheated."  The  courier  mused  a  moment,  and 
said,  "  But  no,  sir,  I  should  not  be  happy  ; 
then  it  would  not  be  sometimes  more,  some- 
times less,  and  I  should  miss  the  excitement 
of  the  game." 

22c?.  —  This  morning  the  diligence  was  at 
the  door  punctually,  and,  taking  our  seats  in 
the  coupe,  we  bade  farewell  to  La  Sibilla.  But 
first  we- ran  back  for  a  parting  glimpse  at  the 
water-fall.  These  last  looks,  like  lovers'  last 
Kisses,  are  nouns  of  multitude,  and  presently 
the  povero  stalliere,  signori,  waited  upon  us, 


ITALY. 


221 


cap  in  hand,  telling  us  that  the  vetturino  was 
impatient,  and  begging  for  drink-money  in 
the  same  breath.  Leopoldo  hovered  longingly 
afar,  for  these  vultures  respect  times  and  sea- 
sons, and  while  one  is  fleshing  his  beak  upon 
the  foreign  prey,  the  others  forbear.  The 
passengers  in  the  diligence  were  not  very 
lively.  The  Romans  are  a  grave  people,  and 
more  so  than  ever  since  '49.  Of  course,  there 
was  one  priest  among  them.  There  always 
is  ;  for  the  mantis  religiosa  is  as  inevitable  to 
these  public  conveyances  as  the  curculio  is  to 
the  plum,  and  one  could  almost  fancy  that 
they  were  bred  in  the  same  way,  —  that  the 
egg  was  inserted  when  the  vehicle  was  green, 
became  developed  as  it  ripened,  and  never 
left  it  till  it  dropped  withered  from  the  pole. 
There  was  nothing  noticeable  on  the  road  to 
Rome,  except  the  strings  of  pack-horses  and 
mules  which  we  met  returning  with  empty 
lime-sacks  to  Tivoli,  whence  comes*  the  supply 
of  Rome.  A  railroad  was  proposed,  but  the 
government  would  not  allow  it,  because  it 


222 


ITALY. 


would  interfere  with  this  carrying-trade,  and 
wisely  granted  instead  a  charter  for  a  road  to 
Frascati,  where  there  was  no  business  what- 
ever to  be  interfered  with.  About  a  mile 
of  this  is  built  in  a  style  worthy  of  ancient 
Rome  ;  and  it  is  possible  that  eventually  an- 
other mile  may  be  accomplished,  for  some 
half-dozen  laborers  are  at  work  upon  it  with 
wheelbarrows,  in  the  leisurely  Roman  fashion. 
If  it  is  ever  finished,  it  will  have  nothing  to 
carry  but  the  conviction  of  its  own  useless- 
ness.  A  railroad  has  been  proposed  to  Civita 
Vecchia ;  but  that  is  out  of  the  question,  be- 
cause it  would  be  profitable.  On  the  whole, 
one  does  not  regret  the  failure  of  these  schemes. 
One  would  not  approach  the  solitary  emotion 
of  a  lifetime,  such  as  is  the  first  sight  of  Rome, 
at  the  rate  of  forty  miles  an  hour.  It  is  bet- 
ter, after  painfully  crawling  up  one  of  those 
long  paved  hills,  to  have  the  postilion  turn  in 
his  saddle,  and,  pointing  with  his  whip,  (with 
out  looking,  for  he  knows  instinctively  where 
it  is,)  say,  Ecco  San  Pietro  !    Then  you  look 


ITALY. 


223 


tremblingly,  and  see  it  hovering  visionary  on 
the  horizon's  verge,  and  in  a  moment  you  are 
rattling  and  rumbling  and  wallowing  down 
into  the  valley,  and  it  is  gone.  So  you  play 
hide-and-seek  with  it  all  the  rest  of  the  way, 
and  have  time  to  converse  with  your  sensa- 
tions. You  fancy  you  have  got  used  to  it  at 
last ;  but  from  the  next  hill-top,  lo,  there  it 
looms  again,  a  new  wonder,  and  you  do  not 
feel  sure  that  it  will  keep  its  tryst  till  you  find 
yourself  under  its  shadow.  The  Dome  is  to 
Rome  what  Vesuvius  is  to  Naples ;  only  a 
greater  wonder,  for  Michael  Angelo  hung  it 
there.  The  traveller  climbs  it  as  he  would 
a  mountain,  and  finds  the  dwellings  of  men 
high  up  on  its  sacred  cliffs.  It  has  its  annual 
eruption,  too,  at  Easter,  when  the  fire  trickles 
and  palpitates  down  its  mighty  shoulders,  seen 
from  far-off  Tivoli.  —  No,  the  locomotive  is 
less  impertinent  at  Portici,  hailing  the  impris- 
oned Titan  there  with  a  kindred  shriek.  Let 
it  not  vex  the  solemn  Roman  ghosts,  or  the 
nobly  desolate  Campagna,  with  whose  soli- 


224 


ITALY. 


tudes  the  shattered  vertebrae  of  the  aqueducts 
are  in  truer  sympathy. 

24:th.  —  To-day  our  journey  to  Subiaco  prop- 
erly begins.  The  jocund  morning  had  called 
the  beggars  to  their  street-corners,  and  the 
women  to  the  windows  ;  the  players  of  morra 
{a  game  probably  as  old  as  the  invention  of 
fingers),  of  chuck-farthing,  and  of  bowls,  had 
cheerfully  begun  the  labors  of  the  day ;  the 
plaintive  cries  of  the  chair-seaters,  frog- 
venders,  and  certain  other  peripatetic  mer- 
chants, the  meaning  of  whose  vocal  adver- 
tisements I  could  never  penetrate,  quaver  at 
regular  intervals,  now  near  and  now  far 
away  ;  a  solitary  Jew  with  a  sack  over  his 
shoulder,  and  who  never  is  seen  to  stop, 
slouches  along,  every  now  and  then  croaking 
a  penitential  Cenei !  as  if  he  were  somehow 
the  embodied  expiation  (by  some  post-Ovid- 
ian  metamorphosis)  of  that  darkest  Roman 
tragedy ;  women  are  bargaining  for  lettuce 
and  endive  ;  the  slimy  Triton  in  the  Piazza 
Barberina   spatters    himself   with  vanishing 


ITALY. 


225 


diamonds  ;  a  peasant  leads  an  ass  on  which 
sits  the  mother  with  the  babe  in  her  arms,  — 
a  living  flight  into  Egypt  ;  in  short,  the 
beautiful  spring  day  had  awakened  all  of 
Rome  that  can  awaken  yet  (for  the  ideal 
Rome  waits  for  another  morning),  when  we 
rattled  along  in  our  carrettella  on  the  way  to 
Palestrina.  A  carrettella  is  to  the  perfected 
vehicle,  as  the  coracle  to  the  steamship ;  it  is 
the  first  crude  conception  of  a  wheeled  car- 
riage. Doubtless  the  inventor  of  it  was  a 
prodigious  genius  in  his  day,  and  rode  proudly 
in  it,  envied  by  the  more  fortunate  pedes- 
trian, and  cushioned  by  his  own  inflated 
imagination.  If  the  chariot  of  Achilles  were 
like  it,  then  was  Hector  happier  at  the  tail 
than  the  son  of  Thetis  on  the  box.  It  is  an 
oblong  basket  upon  two  wheels,  with  a  single 
seat  rising  in  the  middle.  We  had  not  jarred 
over  a  hundred  yards  of  the  Quattro  Fon- 
tane,  before  we  discovered  that  no  elastic 
propugnaculum  had  been  interposed  between 
the  body  and  the  axle,  so  that  we  sat,  as  it 
jo*  o 


226 


ITALY. 


were,  on  paving-stones,  mitigated  only  by  so 
much  as  well-seasoned  ilex  is  less  flinty- 
hearted  than  tufo  or  breccia.  If  there  were 
any  truth  in  the  theory  of  developments,  I 
am  certain  that  we  should  have  been  fur- 
nished with  a  pair  of  rudimentary  elliptical 
springs,  at  least,  before  half  our  day's  journey 
was  over.  However,  as  one  of  those  happy 
illustrations  of  ancient  manners,  which  one 
meets  with  so  often  here,  it  was  instructive  ; 
for  I  now  clearly  understand  that  it  was  not 
merely  by  reason  of  pomp  that  Hadrian  used 
to  be  three  days  in  getting  to  his  villa,  only 
twelve  miles  off.  In  spite  of  the  author  of 
44  Vestiges,"  Nature,  driven  to  extremities, 
can  develop  no  more  easy  cushion  than  a 
blister,  and  no  doubt  treated  an  ancient  em- 
peror and  a  modern  republican  with  severe 
impartiality. 

It  was  difficult  to  talk  without  biting  one's 
tongue  ;  but  as  soon  as  we  had  got  fairly 
beyond  the  gate,  and  out  of  sight  of  the  last 
red-legged  French  soldier,  and  tightly-but- 


ITALY, 


227 


toned  doganiere,  our  driver  became  loqua- 
cious. 

"  I  am  a  good  Catholic,  —  better  than 
most,"  said  he,  suddenly. 

"  What  do  you  mean  by  that  ?  " 

"  Eh  !  they  say  Saint  Peter  wrought  mira- 
cles, and  there  are  enough  who  don't  believe 
it ;  but  I  do.  There 's  the  Barberini  Pal- 
ace, —  behold  one  miracle  of  Saint  Peter ! 
There 's  the  Farnese,  —  behold  another  ! 
There  's  the  Borghese,  —  behold  a  third  ! 
But  there 's  no  end  of  them.  No  saint,  nor 
all  the  saints  put  together,  ever  worked  so 
many  wonders  as  he  ;  and  then,  per  Bacco  ! 
he  is  the  uncle  of  so  many  folks,  —  why, 
that 's  a  miracle  in  itself,  and  of  the  great- 
est !  " 

Presently  he  added  :  "  Do  you  know  how 
we  shall  treat  the  priests  when  we  make  our 
next  revolution  ?  We  shall  treat  them  as 
they  treat  us,  and  that  is  after  the  fashion 
of  the  buffalo.  For  the  buffalo  is  not  content 
with  getting  a  man  down,  but  after  that  he 


228 


ITALY. 


gores  him  and  thrusts  him,  always,  always, 
as  if  he  wished  to  cram  him  to  the  centre  of 
the  earth.  Ah,  if  I  were  only  keeper  of 
hell-gate  !  Not  a  rascal  of  them  all  should 
ever  get  out  into  purgatory  while  I  stood  at 
the  door  !  " 

We  remonstrated  a  little,  but  it  only  exas- 
perated him  the  more. 

"  Blood  of  Judas  !  they  will  eat  nothing 
else  than  gold,  when  a  poor  fellow's  belly  is 
as  empty  as  San  Lorenzo  yonder.  They  '11 
have  enough  of  it  one  of  these  days  —  but 
melted  !  How  do  you  think  they  will  like 
it  for  soup  ?  " 

Perhaps,  if  our  vehicle  had  been  blessed 
with  springs,  our  vetturino  would  have  been 
more  placable.  I  confess  a  growing  morose- 
ness  in  myself,  and  a  wandering  speculation 
or  two  as  to  the  possible  fate  of  the  builder 
of  our  chariot  in  the  next  world.  But  I 
am  more  and  more  persuaded  every  day,  that, 
as  far  as  the  popular  mind  is  concerned,  Ro- 
manism is  a  dead  thing  in  Italy.     It  sur- 


ITALY. 


229 


vives  only  because  there  is  nothing  else  to 
replace  it  with,  for  men  must  wear  their  old 
habits  (however  threadbare  and  out  at  the 
elbows)  till  they  get  better.  It  is  literally  a 
superstition,  —  a  something  left  to  stand  over 
till  the  great  commercial  spirit  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  balances  his  accounts  again, 
and  then  it  will  be  banished  to  the  limbo  of 
profit  and  loss.  The  Papacy  lies  dead  in 
the  Vatican,  but  the  secret  is  kept  for  the 
present,  and  government  is  carried  on  in  its 
name.  After  the  fact  gets  abroad,  perhaps 
its  ghost  will  terrify  men  a  little  while  longer, 
but  only  while  they  are  in  the  dark,  though 
the  ghost  of  a  creed  is  a  hard  thing  to  give 
a  mortal  wound  to,  and  may  be  laid,  after  all, 
only  in  a  Red  Sea  of  blood. 

So  we  rattled  along  till  we  came  to  a  large 
albergo  just  below  the  village  of  Colonna. 
While  our  horse  was  taking  his  rinfresco^  we 
climbed  up  to  it,  and  found  it  desolate  enough, 
—  the  houses  never  rebuilt  since  Consul  Rienzi 
sacked  it  five  hundred  years  ago.    It  was  a 


230 


ITALY. 


kind  of  gray  incrustation  on  the  top  of  the 
hill,  chiefly  inhabited  by  pigs,  chickens,  and 
an  old  woman  with  a  distaff,  who  looked  as 
sacked  and  ruinous  as  everything  around  her. 
There  she  sat  in  the  sun,  a  dreary,  doting 
Clotho,  who  had  outlived  her  sisters,  and  span 
endless  destinies  which  none  was  left  to  cut  at 
the  appointed  time.  Of  course  she  paused 
from  her  work  a  moment,  and  held  out  a 
skinny  hand,  with  the  usual,  "  Noblest  gentle- 
men, give  me  something  for  charity."  We 
gave  her  enough  to  pay  Charon's  ferriage 
across  to  her  sisters,  and  departed  hastily,  for 
there  was  something  uncanny  about  the  place. 
In  this  climate  even  the  finger-marks  of  Ruin 
herself  are  indelible,  and  the  walls  were  still 
blackened  with  Rienzi's  fires.  \y 

As  we  waited  for  our  carrettella,  I  saw  four 
or  five  of  the  lowest-looking  peasants  come  up 
and  read  the  handbill  of  a  tombola  (a  kind  of 
lottery)  which  was  stuck  up  beside  the  inn- 
door.  One  of  them  read  it  aloud  for  our  ben- 
efit, and  with  remarkable  propriety  of  accent 


ITALY. 


231 


and  emphasis.  This  benefit  of  clergy,  how- 
ever, is  of  no  great  consequence  where  there 
is  nothing  to  read.  In  Rome,  this  morning, 
the  walls  were  spattered  with  placards  con- 
demning the  works  of  George  Sand,  Eugene 
Sue,  Gioberti,  and  others.  But  in  Rome  one 
may  contrive  to  read  any  book  he  likes  ;  and 
I  know  Italians  who  are  familiar  with  Sweden- 
borg,  and  even  Strauss. 

Our  stay  at  the  albergo  was  illustrated  by 
one  other  event,  —  a  nightingale  singing  in  a 
full-blossomed  elder-bush  on  the  edge  of  a 
brook  just  across  the  road.  So  liquid  were 
the  notes,  and  so  full  of  spring,  that  the  twig 
he  tilted  on  seemed  a  conductor  through 
which  the  mingled  magnetism  of  brook  and 
blossom  flowed  into  him  and  were  precipitated 
in  music.  Nature  understands  thoroughly  the 
value  of  contrasts,  and  accordingly  a  donkey 
from  a  shed  hard  by,  hitched  and  hesitated 
and  agonized  through  his  bray,  so  that  we 
might  be  conscious  at  once  of  the  positive  and 
negative  poles  of  song.    It  was  pleasant  to  see 


232 


ITALY. 


with  what  undoubting  enthusiasm  he  went 
through  his  solo,  and  vindicated  Providence 
from  the  imputation  of  weakness  in  making 
such  trifles  as  the  nightingale  yonder.  "  Give 
ear,  O  heaven  and  earth !  "  he  seemed  to 
say,  "  nor  dream  that  good,  sound  common- 
sense  is  extinct  or  out  of  fashion  so  long  as  1 
live."  I  suppose  Nature  made  the  donkey 
half  abstractedly,  while  she  was  feeling  hkr 
way  up  to  her  ideal  in  the  horse,  and  that  his 
bray  is  in  like  manner  an  experimental  sketch 
for  the  neigh  of  her  finished  animal. 

We  drove  on  to  Palestrina,  passing  for  some 
distance  over  an  old  Roman  road,  as  carriage- 
able as  when  it  was  built.  Palestrina  occu- 
pies the  place  of  the  once  famous  Temple  of 
Fortune,  whose  ruins  are  perhaps  a  fitter  mon- 
ument of  the  fickle  goddess  than  ever  the  per- 
fect fane  was. 

Come  hither,  weary  ghosts  that  wail 

O'er  buried  Nimroud's  carven  walls, 
And  ye  whose  nightly  footsteps  frail 

From  the  dread  hush  of  Memphian  halls 

Lead  forth  the  whispering  funerals  ! 


ITALY. 


233 


Come  hither,  shade  of  ancient  pain 
Thatj  muffled  sitting,  hear'st  the  foam 

To  death-deaf  Carthage  shoat  in  vain, 
And  thou  that  in  the  Sibyl's  tome 
Tear-stain'st  the  never  after  Rome  ! 

Come,  Marius,  Wolsey,  all  ye  great 

On  whom  proud  Fortune  stamped  her  heel, 

And  see  herself  the  sport  of  Fate, 
Herself  discrowned  and  made  to  feel 
The  treason  of  her  slippery  wheel ! 

One  climbs  through  a  great  part  of  the  town 
by  stone  steps,  passing  fragments  of  Pelasgic 
wall,  (for  history,  like  geology,  may  be  studied 
here  in  successive  rocky  strata,')  and  at  length 
reaches  the  inn,  called  the  Cappellaro,  the  sign 
of  which  is  a  great  tin  cardinal's  hat,  swing- 
ing from  a  small  building  on  the  other  side 
of  the  street,  so  that  a  better  view  of  it  may 
be  had  from  the  hostelry  itself.  The  land- 
lady, a  stout  woman  of  about  sixty  years,  wel- 
comed us  heartily,  and  burst  forth  into  an  elo- 
quent eulogy  on  some  fresh  sea-fish  which  she 
had  just  received  from  Rome.    She  promised 


234 


ITALY. 


everything  for  dinner,  leaving  us  to  choose ; 
but  as  a  skilful  juggler  flitters  the  cards  before 
*  you,  and,  while  he  seems  to  offer  all,  forces 
upon  you  the  one  he  wishes,  so  we  found  that 
whenever  we  undertook  to  select  from  her 
voluble  bill  of  fare,  we  had  in  some  unaccount- 
able manner  always  ordered  sea-fish.  There- 
fore, after  a  few  vain  efforts,  we  contented 
ourselves,  and,  while  our  dinner  was  cooking, 
climbed  up  to  the  top  of  the  town.  Here 
stands  the  deserted  Palazzo  Barberini,  in 
which  is  a  fine  Roman  mosaic  pavement.  It 
was  a  dreary  old  place.  On  the  ceilings  of 
some  of  the  apartments  were  fading  out  the 
sprawling  apotheoses  of  heroes  of  the  family, 
(themselves  long  ago  faded  utterly,)  who 
probably  went  through  a  somewhat  different 
ceremony  after  their  deaths  from  that  repre- 
sented here.  One  of  the  rooms  on  the  ground- 
floor  was  still  occupied,  and  from  its  huge 
grated  windows  there  swelled  and  subsided  at 
intervals  a  confused  turmoil  of  voices,  some 
talking,  some  singing,  some  swearing,  and 


ITALY. 


235 


some  lamenting,  as  if  a  page  of  Dante's  In- 
ferno had  become  suddenly  alive  under  one's 
eye.  This  was  the  prison,  and  in  front  of 
each  window  a  large  stone  block  allowed  tete 
d-tete  discourses  between  the  prisoners  and 
their  friends  outside.  Behind  the  palace  rises 
a  steep,  rocky  hill,  with  a  continuation  of 
ruined  castle,  the  innocent  fastness  now  of 
rooks  and  swallows.  We  walked  down  to  a 
kind  of  terrace,  and  watched  the  Alban  Mount 
(which  saw  the  sunset  for  us  by  proxy)  till 
the  bloom  trembled  nearer  and  nearer  to  its 
summit,  then  went  wholly  out,  we  could  not 
say  when,  and  day  was  dead.  Simultaneously 
we  thought  of  dining,  and  clattered  hastily 
down  to  the  Cappellaro.  We  had  to  wait  yet 
half  an  hour  for  dinner,  and  from  where  I  sat 
I  could  see  through  the  door  of  the  dining- 
room  a  kind  of  large  hall  into  which  a  door 
from  the  kitchen  also  opened.  Presently  I 
saw  the  landlady  come  out  with  a  little  hang- 
ing lamp  in  her  hand,  and  seat  herself  amply 
before  a  row  of  baskets  ranged  upside-down 


236 


ITALY. 


along  the  wall.  She  carefully  lifted  the  edge 
of  one  of  these,  and,  after  she  had  groped  in 
it  a  moment,  I  heard  that  hoarse  choking 
scream  peculiar  to  fowls  when  seized  by  the 
leg  in  the  dark,  as  if  their  throats  were  in 
their  tibiae  after  sunset.  She  took  out  a  fine 
young  cock  and  set  him  upon  his  feet  before 
her,  stupid  with  sleep,  and  blinking  helplessly 
at  the  lamp,  which  he  perhaps  took  for  a  sun 
in  reduced  circumstances,  doubtful  whether  to 
crow  or  cackle.  She  looked  at  him  admir- 
ingly, felt  of  him,  sighed,  gazed  sadly  at  his 
coral  crest,  and  put  him  back  again.  This 
ceremony  she  repeated  with  five  or  six  of  the 
baskets,  and  then  went  back  into  the  kitchen. 
I  thought  of  Thessalian  hags  and  Arabian  en- 
chantresses, and  wondered  if  these  were  trans- 
formed travellers,  —  for  travellers  go  through 
queer  transformations  sometimes.  Should 
Storg  and  I  be  crowing  and  scratching  to- 
morrow morning,  instead  of  going  to  Subiaco  ? 
Should  we  be  Plato's  men,  with  the  feathers, 
instead  of  without  them  ?    I  would  probe  this 


ITALY. 


237 


mystery.  So,  when  the  good  woman  came  in 
to  lay  the  table,  I  asked  what  she  had  been 
doing  with  the  fowls. 

"  I  thought  to  kill  one  for  the  gentlemen's 
soup  ;  but  they  were  so  beautiful  my  heart 
failed  me.  Still,  if  the  gentlemen  wish  it  — 
only  I  thought  two  pigeons  would  be  more 
delicate." 

Of  course  we  declined  to  be  accessory  to 
such  a  murder,  and  she  went  off  delighted, 
returning  in  a  few  minutes  with  our  dinner. 
First  we  had  soup,  then  a  roasted  kid,  then 
boiled  pigeons,  (of  which  the  soup  had  been 
made,)  and  last  the  pesci  di  mare,  which  were 
not  quite  so  great  a  novelty  to  us  as  to  our 
good  hostess.  However,  hospitality,  like  so 
many  other  things,  is  reciprocal,  and  the  guest 
must  bring  his  half,  or  it  is  naught.  The 
prosperity  of  a  dinner  lies  in  the  heart  of  him 
that  eats  it,  and  an  appetite  twelve  miles  long 
enabled  us  to  do  as  great  justice  to  the  fish  as 
if  we  were  crowding  all  Lent  into  our  meal. 
The  landlady  came  and  sat  by  us ;  a  large  and 


238 


ITALY. 


serious  cat,  winding  her  great  tail  around  her, 
settled  herself  comfortably  on  the  table,  lick- 
ing her  paws  now  and  then,  with  a  poor  re- 
lation's look  at  the  fish ;  a  small  dog  sprang 
into  an  empty  chair,  and  a  large  one,  with 
very  confidential  manners,  would  go  from  one 
to  the  other  of  us,  laying  his  paw  upon  our 
arms  as  if  he  had  an  important  secret  to  com- 
municate, and  alternately  pricking  and  droop- 
ing his  ears  in  hope  or  despondency.  The  al- 
bergatrice  forthwith  began  to  tell  us  her  story, 
—  how  she  was  a  widow,  how  she  had  borne 
thirteen  children,  twelve  still  living,  and  how 
she  received  a  pension  of  sixty  scudi  a  year, 
under  the  old  Roman  law,  for  her  meritorious- 
ness  in  this  respect.  The  portrait  of  the  son 
she  had  lost  hung  over  the  chimney-place,  and, 
pointing  to  it,  she  burst  forth  into  the  follow- 
ing droll  threnody.  The  remarks  in  paren- 
thesis were  screamed  through  the  kitchen- 
door,  which  stood  ajar,  or  addressed  personally 
to  us. 

"  O  my  son,  my  son  I  the  doctors  killed 


ITALY. 


239 


him,  just  as  truly  as  if  they  had  poisoned  him ! 
O  how  beautiful  he  was !  beautiful !  beauti- 
ful ! !  beautiful  ! !  !  (Are  not  those  fish 
done  yet  ?)  Look,  that  is  his  likeness,  —  but 
he  was  handsomer.  He  was  as  big  as  that  " 
(extending  her  arms),  —  "  big  breast,  big 
shoulders,  big  sides,  big  legs  !  ( Eat  'em,  eat 
'em,  they  won't  hurt  you,  fresh  sea-fish,  fresh ! 
fresh  !  I  fresh  ! !  !)  I  told  them  the  doctors 
had  murdered  him,  when  they  carried  him 
with  torches !  He  had  been  hunting,  and 
brought  home  some  rabbits,  I  remember,  for 
he  was  not  one  that  ever  came  empty-handed, 
and  got  the  fever,  and  you  treated  him  for 
consumption,  and  killed  him  !  (Shall  I  come 
out  there,  or  will  you  bring  some  more  fish?)  " 
So  she  went  on,  talking  to  herself,  to  us,  to 
the  little  serva  in  the  kitchen,  and  to  the 
medical  profession  in  general,  repeating  every 
epithet  three  times,  with  increasing  emphasis, 
till  her  voice  rose  to  a  scream,  and  contriving 
to  mix  up  her  living  children  with  her  dead 
one,  the  fish,  the  doctors,  the  serva,  and  tte 


240 


ITALY. 


l^abbits,  till  it  was  hard  to  say  whether  it  was 
the  fish  that  had  large  legs,  whether  the  doc- 
tors had  killed  them,  or  the  serva  had  killed 
the  doctors,  and  whether  the  hello !  hello !  I 
hello  !  !  !  referred  to  her  son  or  a  particularly 
fine  rabbit. 

25th.  —  Having  engaged  our  guide  and 
horses  the  night  before,  we  set  out  betimes 
this  morning  for  Olevano.  From  Palestrina 
to  Cavi  the  road  winds  along  a  narrow  valley, 
following  the  course  of  a  stream  which  rustles 
rather  than  roars  below.  Large  chestnut-trees 
lean  every  way  on  the  steep  sides  of  the  hills 
above  us,  and  at  every  opening  we  could  see 
great  stretches  of  Campagna  rolling  away  and 
away  toward  the  bases  of  purple  mountains 
streaked  with  snow.  The  sides  of  the  road 
were  drifted  with  heaps  of  wild  hawthorn  and 
honeysuckle  in  full  bloom,  and  bubbling  with 
innumerable  nightingales  that  sang  unseen. 
Overhead  the  sunny  sky  tinkled  with  larks,  as 
if  the  frost  in  the  air  were  breaking  up  and 
whirling  away  on  the  swollen  currents  of 
spring. 


ITALY. 


241 


Before  long  we  overtook  a  little  old  man 
hobbling  toward  Cavi,  with  a  bag  upon  his 
back.  This  was  the  mail !  Happy  country, 
which  Hurry  and  Worry  have  not  yet  subju- 
gated !  Then  we  clattered  up  and  down  the 
narrow  paved  streets  of  Cavi,  through  the 
market-place,  full  of  men  dressed  all  alike  in 
blue  jackets,  blue  breeches,  and  white  stock- 
ings, who  do  not  stare  at  the  strangers,  and 
so  out  at  the  farther  gate.  Now  oftener  and 
oftener  we  meet  groups  of  peasants  in  gayest 
dresses,  ragged  pilgrims  with  staff  and  scallop, 
singing  (horribly)  ;  then  processions  with  bag- 
pipes and  pipes  in  front,  droning  and  squeal- 
ing (horribly)  ;  then  strings  of  two-wheeled 
carts,  eight  or  nine  in  each,  and  in  the  first 
the  priest,  book  in  hand,  setting  the  stave,  and 
all  singing  (horribly).  This  must  be  inquired 
into.  Gigantic  guide,  who,  splendid  with  blue 
sash  and  silver  knee-buckles,  has  contrived,  by 
incessant  drumming  with  his  heels,  to  get  his 
mule  in  front,  is  hailed. 

11  p 


ITALY. 


"  Ho,  Petruccio,  what  is  the  meaning  of  all 
this  press  of  people  ?  " 

"  Festa,  Lordship,  at  Genezzano." 
"  What  festa?" 

"  Of  the  Madonna,  Lordship,"  and  touches 
his  hat,  for  they  are  all  dreadfully  afraid  of 
her  for  some  reason  or  other. 

We  are  in  luck,  this  being  the  great  festa 
of  the  year  among  the  mountains,  —  a  thing 
which  people  go  out  of  Rome  to  see. 

"  Where  is  Genezzano  ?  " 

"  Just  over  yonder,  Lordship,"  and  pointed 
to  the  left,  where  was  what  seemed  like  a 
monstrous  crystallization  of  rock  on  the  crown 
of  a  hill,  with  three  or  four  taller  crags  of 
castle  towering  in  the  midst,  and  all  gray,  ex 
cept  the  tiled  roofs,  whose  wrinkled  sides  were 
gold-washed  with  a  bright  yellow  lichen,  as 
if  ripples,  turned  by  some  spell  to  stone,  had 
contrived  to  detain  the  sunshine  with  which 
they  were  touched  at  the  moment  of  trans- 
formation. 

The  road,  wherever  it  came  into  sight, 


ITALY. 


243 


burned  with  brilliant  costumes,  like  an  illu- 
minated page  of  Froissart.  Gigantic  guide 
meanwhile  shows  an  uncomfortable  and  fidg- 
ety reluctance  to  turn  aside  and  enter  fairy- 
land, which  is  wholly  unaccountable.  Is  the 
huge  earthen  creature  an  Afrite,  under  sacred 
pledge  to  Solomon,  and  in  danger  of  being 
sealed  up  again,  if  he  venture  near  the  festival 
of  our  Blessed  Lady  ?  If  so,  that  also  were 
a  ceremony  worth  seeing,  and  we  insist.  He 
wriggles  and  swings  his  great  feet  with  an  evi- 
dent impulse  to  begin  kicking  the  sides  of  his 
mule  again  and  fly.  The  wray  over  the  hills 
from  Genezzano  to  Olevano  he  pronounces 
seomodissima,  demanding  of  every  peasant  who 
goes  by  if  it  be  not  entirely  impassable.  This 
leading  question,  put  in  all  the  tones  of  plausi- 
ble entreaty  he  can  command,  meets  ,the  in- 
variable reply,  "  JE  scomoda,  davvero ;  ma  per 
le  bestie  —  eh!"  (it  is  bad,  of  a  truth,  but  for 
the  beasts  —  eh  !)  and  then  one  of  those  inde- 
scribable shrugs,  unintelligible  at  first  as  the 
compass  to  a  savage,  but  in  which  the  expert 


244  ITALY. 

can  make  twenty  hair's-breadth  distinctions 
between  N.  E.  and  N.  N.  E. 

Finding  that  destiny  had  written  it  on  his 
forehead,  the  guide  at  last  turned  and  went 
cantering  and  kicking  toward  Genezzano,  we 
following.  Just  before  you  reach  the  town, 
the  road  turns  sharply  to  the  right,  and,  cross- 
ing a  little  gorge,  loses  itself  in  the  dark 
gateway.  Outside  the  gate  is  an  open  space, 
which  formicated  with  peasantry  in  every 
variety  of  costume  that  was  not  Parisian. 
Laughing  women  were  climbing  upon  their 
horses  (which  they  bestride  like  men)  ;  pil- 
grims were  chanting,  and  beggars  (the  howl 
of  an  Italian  beggar  in  the  country  is  some- 
thing terrible)  howling  in  discordant  rivalry. 
It  was  a  scene  lively  enough  to  make  Hera- 
clitus  shed  a  double  allowance  of  tears  ;  but 
our  giant  was  still  discomforted.  As  soon  as 
we  had  entered  the  gate,  he  dodged  into  a 
little  back-street,  just  as  we  were  getting  out 
of  which  the  mystery  of  his  unwillingness 
was  cleared  up.    He  had  been  endeavoring 


ITALY. 


245 


to  avoid  a  creditor.  But  it  so  chanced  (as 
Fate  can  hang  a  man  with  even  a  rope  of 
sand)  that  the  enemy  was  in  position  just  at 
the  end  of  this  very  lane,  where  it  debouched 
into  the  Piazza  of  the  town. 

The  disputes  of  Italians  are  very  droll  things, 
and  I  will  accordingly  bag  the  one  which  is 
now  imminent,  as  a  specimen.  They  quarrel 
as  unaccountably  as  dogs,  who  put  their  noses 
together,  dislike  each  other's  kind  of  smell, 
and  instantly  tumble  one  over  the  other,  with 
noise  enough  to  draw  the  eyes  of  a  whole 
street.  So  these  people  burst  out,  without 
apparent  preliminaries,  into  a  noise  and  fury 
and  war-dance  which  would  imply  the  very 
utmost  pitch  and  agony  of  exasperation.  And 
the  subsidence  is  as  sudden.  They  explode 
each  other  on  mere  contact,  as  if  by  a  law  of 
nature,  like  two  hostile  gases.  They  do  not 
grow  warm,  but  leap  at  once  from  zero  to  some 
degree  of  white-heat,  to  indicate  which  no 
Anglo-Saxon  thermometer  of  wrath  is  highly 
enough  graduated.    If  I  were  asked  to  name 


246 


ITALY. 


one  universal  characteristic  of  an  Italian  town, 
1  should  say,  two  men  clamoring  and  shak- 
ing themselves  to  pieces  at  each  other,  and  a 
woman  leaning  lazily  out  of  a  window,  and 
perhaps  looking  at  something  else.  Till  one 
gets  used  to  this  kind  of  thing,  one  expects 
some  horrible  catastrophe  ;  but  during  eight 
months  in  Italy  I  have  only  seen  blows  ex- 
changed thrice.  In  the  present  case  the  ex- 
plosion was  of  harmless  gunpowder. 

"  Why-haven't-you-paid-those-fifty-five-ba- 
jocchi-&t-the-pizzicarolo' s  ?  "  began  the  adver- 
sary, speaking  with  such  inconceivable  rapidity 
that  he  made  only  one  word,  nay,  as  it  seemed, 
one  monosyllable,  of  the  whole  sentence.  Our 
giant,  with  a  controversial  genius  which  I 
should  not  have  suspected  in  him,  immedi- 
ately, and  with  great  adroitness,  changed  the 
ground  of  dispute,  and,  instead  of  remaining 
an -insolvent  debtor,  raised  himself  at  once  to 
the  ethical  position  of  a  moralist,  resisting  an 
unjust  demand  from  principle. 

"  It  was  only  forty-fixe"  roared  he. 


ITALY. 


247 


"  But  I  say  fifty-Rye"  screamed  the  other, 
and  shook  his  close-cropped  head  as  a  boy 
does  an  apple  on  the  end  of  a  switch,  as  if  he 
meant  presently  to  jerk  it  off  at  his  antago- 
nist. 

"  Birbone!"  yelled  the  guide,  gesticulating 
so  furiously  with  every  square  inch  of  his  pon- 
derous body  that  I  thought  he  would  throw 
his  mule  over,  the  poor  beast  standing  all  the 
while  with  drooping  head  and  ears  while  the 
thunders  of  this  man-quake  burst  over  him. 
So  feels  the  tortoise  that  sustains  the  globe 
when  earth  suffers  fiery  convulsions. 

"Birbante!"  retorted  the  creditor,  and  the 
opprobrious  epithet  clattered  from  between  his 
shaking  jaws  as  a  refractory  copper  is  rattled 
out  of  a  Jehoiada-box  by  a  child. 

"Andate  vi  far  friggere!"  howled  giant. 

"Andate  ditto ,  ditto!"  echoed  creditor, — 
and  behold,  the  thing  is  over !  The  giant 
promises  to  attend  to  the  affair  when  he  comes 
back,  the  creditor  returns  to  his  booth,  and 
we  ri'Ie  rf 


248 


ITALY. 


Speaking  of  Italian  quarrels,  I  am  tempted 
to  parenthesize  here  another  which  I  saw  at 
Civita  Vecchia.  We  had  been  five  days  on 
our  way  from  Leghorn  in  a  French  steamer, 
a  voyage  performed  usually,  I  think,  in  about 
thirteen  hours.  It  was  heavy  weather,  blow- 
ing what  a  sailor  would  call  half  a  gale  of 
wind,  and  the  caution  of  our  captain,  not  to 
call  it  fear,  led  him  to  put  in  for  shelter  first 
at  Porto  Ferrajo  in  Elba,  and  then  at  Santo 
Stefano  on  the  Italian  coast.  Our  little  black 
water-beetle  of  a  mail-packet  was  knocked 
about  pretty  well,  and  all  the  Italian  passen- 
gers disappeared  in  the  forward  cabin  before 
we  were  out  of  port.  When  we  were  fairly 
at  anchor  within  the  harbor  of  Civita  Vecchia, 
they  crawled  out  again,  sluggish  as  winter 
flies,  their  vealy  faces  mezzotinted  with  soot. 
One  of  them  presently  appeared  in  the  custom- 
house, his  only  luggage  being  a  cage  closely 
covered  with  a  dirty  red  handkerchief,  which 
represented  his  linen. 

"  What  have  you  in  the  cage  ?  "  asked  the 
doganiere. 


ITALY. 


249 


"  Eh  !  nothing  other  than  a  parrot." 

"  There  is  a  duty  of  one  scudo  and  one 
bajoccho,  then." 

"  Santo  diavolo  !  but  what  hoggishness  !  " 

Thereupon  instant  and  simultaneous  blow- 
up, or  rather  a  series  of  explosions,  like  those 
in  honor  of  a  Neapolitan  saint's-day,  lasting 
about  ten  minutes,  and  followed  by  as  sudden 
quiet.  In  the  course  of  it,  the  owner  of  the 
bird,  playing  irreverently  on  the  first  half  of 
its  name  Qpappag&\\o),  hinted  that  it  would  be 
a  high  duty  for  his  Holiness  himself  (Papa). 
After  a  pause  for  breath,  he  said  quietly,  as 
if  nothing  had  happened,  "Very  good,  then, 
since  I  must  pay,  I  will,"  and  began  fum- 
bling for  the  money. 

"  Meanwhile,  do  me  the  politeness  to  show 
me  the  bird,"  said  the  officer. 

"  With  all  pleasure,"  and,  lifting  a  corner 
of  the  handkerchief,  there  lay  the  object  of 
dispute  on  his  back,  stone-dead,  with  his  claws 
curled  up  helplessly  on  each  side  his  breast. 
I  believe  the  owner  would  have  been  pleased 


250 


ITALY. 


had  it  even  been  his  grandmother  who  had 
thus  evaded  duty,  so  exquisite  is  the  pleasure 
of  an  Italian  in  escaping  payment  of  any- 
thing. 

"  I  make  a  present  of  the  poor  bird,"  said 
he  blandly. 

The  publican,  however,  seemed  to  feel  that 
he  had  been  somehow  cheated,  and  I  left  them 
in  high  debate,  as  to  whether  the  bird  were 
dead  when  it  entered  the  custom-house,  and, 
if  it  had  been,  whether  a  dead  parrot  were 
dutiable.  Do  not  blame  me  for  being  enter- 
tained and  trying  to  entertain  you  with  these 
trifles.    I  remember  Virgil's  stern 

"  Che  per  poco  e  che  teco  non  mi  risso," 

but  Dante's  journey  was  of  more  import  to 
himself  and  others  than  mine. 

I  am  struck  by  the  freshness  and  force  of 
the  passions  in  Europeans,  and  cannot  help 
feeling  as  if  there  were  something  healthy  in 
it.  When  I  think  of  the  versatile  and  ac- 
commodating habits  of  America,  it  seems  like 


ITALY. 


251 


and  without  thunder-storms.  In  proportion 
i  man  grows  commercial,  does  he  also  be- 
;ome  dispassionate  and  incapable  of  electric 
amotions  ?  The  driving-wheels  of  all-powerful 
aature  are  in  the  back  of  the  head,  and,  as 
man  is  the  highest  type  of  organization,  so  a 
nation  is  better  or  worse  as  it  advances  toward 
the  highest  type  of  man,  or  recedes  from  it. 
But  it  is  ill  with  a  nation  when  the  cerebrum 
sucks  the  cerebellum  dry,  for  it  cannot  live 
by  intellect  alone.  The  broad  foreheads  al- 
ways carry  the  day  at  last,  but  only  when 
they  are  based  on  or  buttressed  with  massive 
hind-heads.  It  would  be  easier  to  make  a 
people  great  in  whom  the  animal  is  vigorous, 
than  to  keep  one  so  after  it  has  begun  to  spin- 
dle into  over-intellectuality.  The  hands  that 
have  grasped  dominion  and  held  it  have  been 
large  and  hard  ;  those  from  which  it  has  slipped, 
delicate,  and  apt  for  the  lyre  and  the  pen- 
cil. Moreover,  brain  is  always  to  be  bought, 
but  passion  never  comes  to  market.  On  the 
whole,  I  am  rather  inclined  to  like  this  Euro- 


252 


ITALY. 


pean  impatience  and  fire,  even  while  I  laugh 
at  it,  and  sometimes  find  myself  surmising 
whether  a  people  who,  like  the  Americans, 
put  up  quietly  with  all  sorts  of  petty  personal 
impositions  and  injustices,  will  not  at  length 
find  it  too  great  a  bore  to  quarrel  with  great 
public  wrongs. 

Meanwhile,  I  must  remember  that  I  am  in 
Genezzano,  and  not  in  the  lecturer's  desk. 
We  walked  about  for  an  hour  or  two,  ad- 
miring the  beauty  and  grand  bearing  of  the 
women,  and  the  picturesque  vivacity  and  ever- 
renewing  unassuetude  of  the  whole  scene. 
Take  six  of  the  most  party-colored  dreams, 
break  them  to  pieces,  put  them  into  a  fantasy- 
kaleidoscope,  and  when  you  look  through  it 
you  will  see  something  that  for  strangeness, 
vividness,  and  mutability  looked  like  the  little 
Piazza  of  Genezzano  seen  from  the  church 
porch.  As  we  wound  through  the  narrow 
streets  again  to  the  stables  where  we  had  left 
our  horses,  a  branch  of  laurel  or  ilex  would 
mark  a  wine-shop,  and,  looking  till  our  eye 


ITALY. 


253 


cooled  and  toned  itself  down  to  dusky  sympa- 
thy with  the  crypt,  we  could  see  the  smoky 
interior  sprinkled  with  white  head-cloths  and 
scarlet  bodices,  with  here  and  there  a  yellow 
spot  of  lettuce  or  the  red  inward  gleam  of  a 
wine-flask.  The  head-dress  is  precisely  of  that 
most  ancient  pattern  seen  on  Egyptian  statues, 
and  so  colossal  are  many  of  the  wearers,  that 
you  might  almost  think  you  saw  a  party  of 
young  sphinxes  carousing  in  the  sunless  core 
of  a  pyramid. 

We  remounted  our  beasts,  and,  for  about  a 
mile,  cantered  gayly  along  a  fine  road,  and 
then  turned  into  a  by-path  along  the  flank  of 
a  mountain.  Here  the  guide's  strada  scomo- 
dissima  began,  and  we  were  forced  to  dis- 
mount, and  drag  our  horses  downward  for  a 
mile  or  two.  We  crossed  a  small  plain  in  the 
valley,  and  then  began  to  climb  the  opposite 
•ascent.  The  path  was  perhaps  four  feet  broad, 
and  was  paved  with  irregularly  shaped  blocks 
of  stone,  which,  having  been  raised  and  low- 
ered, tipped,  twisted,  undermined,  and  gener- 


254 


ITALY, 


ally  capsized  by  the  rains  and  frosts  of  centu- 
ries, presented  the  most  diabolically  ingenious 
traps  and  pit-falls.  All  the  while  the  scenery 
was  beautiful.  Mountains  of  every  shape  and 
hue  changed  their  slow  outlines  ever  as  we 
moved,  now  opening,  now  closing  around  us, 
sometimes  peering  down  solemnly  at  us  over 
each  other's  shoulders,  and  then  sinking  slowly 
out  of  sight,  or,  at  some  sharp  turn  of  the  path, 
seeming  to  stride  into  the  valley  and  confront 
us  with  their  craggy  challenge,  —  a  challenge 
which  the  little  valleys  accepted,  if  we  did  not, 
matching  their  rarest  tints  of  gray  and  brown, 
and  pink  and  purple,  or  that  royal  dye  to 
make  which  all  these  were  profusely  melted 
together  for  a  moment's  ornament,  with  as 
many  shades  of  various  green  and  yellow. 
Gray  towns  crowded  and  clung  on  the  tops 
of  peaks  that  seemed  inaccessible.  We  owe 
a  great  deal  of  picturesqueness  to  the  quarrels 
and  thieveries  of  the  barons  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  The  traveller  and  artist  should  put 
up  a  prayer  for  their  battered  old  souls.  It 


ITALY. 


255 


was  to  be  out  of  their  way  and  that  of  the 
Saracens  that  people  were  driven  to  make 
their  homes  in  spots  so  sublime  and  incon- 
venient that  the  eye  alone  finds  it  pleasant 
to  climb  up  to  them.  Nothing  else  but  an 
American  land-company  ever  managed  to  in- 
duce settlers  upon  territory  of  such  uninhab- 
itable quality.  I  have  seen  an  insect  that 
makes  a  mask  for  himself  out  of  the  lichens 
of  the  rock  over  which  he  crawls,  contriving 
so  to  deceive  the  birds ;  and  the  towns  in  this 
wild  region  would  seem  to  have  been  built  on 
the  same  principle.  Made  of  the  same  stone 
with  the  cliffs  on  which  they  perch,  it  asks 
good  eyesight  to  make  them  out  at  the  dis- 
tance of  a  few  miles,  and  every  wandering 
mountain-mist  annihilates  them  for  the  mo- 
ment. 

At  intervals,  I  could  hear  the  giant,  after 
digging  at  the  sides  of  his  mule  with  his  spur- 
less  heels,  growling  to  himself,  and  imprecat- 
ing an  apoplexy  (accidente)  upon  the  path  and 
him  who  made  it.    This  is  the  universal  male- 


256 


ITALY. 


diction  here,  and  once  it  was  put  into  rhyme 
for  my  benefit.  I  was  coming  down  the  rus- 
ty steps  of  San  Gregorio  one  day,  and  hav- 
ing paid  no  heed  to  a  stout  woman  of  thirty 
odd  who  begged  somewhat  obtrusively,  she 
screamed  after  me, 

"  Ah,  vi  pigli  un  accidente, 
Voi  che  non  date  niente  ! " 

Ah,  may  a  sudden  apoplexy, 

You  who  give  not,  come  and  vex  ye ! 

Our  guide  could  not  long  appease  his  mind 
with  this  milder  type  of  objurgation,  but  soon 
intensified  it  into  accidentaecio,  which  means 
a  selected  apoplexy  of  uncommon  size  and 
ugliness.  As  the  path  grew  worse  and  worse, 
so  did  the  repetition  of  this  phrase  (for  he 
was  slow  of  invention)  become  more  frequent, 
till  at  last  he  did  nothing  but  kick  and  curse, 
mentally,  I  have  no  doubt,  including  us  in  his 
malediction.  I  think  it  would  have  gratified 
Longinus  or  Fuseli  (both  of  whom  commended 
swearing)  to  have  heard  him.  Before  long 
we  turned  the  flank  of  the  hill  by  a  little 


ITALY. 


257 


shrine  of  the  Madonna,  and  there  was  Olevano 
just  above  us,  Like  the  other  towns  in  this 
district,  it  was  the  diadem  of  an  abrupt  peak 
of  rock.  From  the  midst  of  it  jutted  the  ruins 
of  an  old  stronghold  of  the  Colonna.  Proba- 
bly not  a  house  has  been  built  in  it  for  cen- 
turies. To  enter  the  town,  we  literally  rode 
up  a  long  flight  of  stone  steps,  and  soon  found 
ourselves  in  the  Piazza.  We  stopped  to  buy 
some  cigars,  and  the  zigararo,  as  he  rolled 
them  up,  asked  if  we  did  not  want  dinner. 
We  told  him  we  should  get  it  at  the  inn. 
Benissimo,  he  would  be  there  before  us.  What 
he  meant,  we  could  not  divine ;  but  it  turned 
out  that  he  was  the  landlord,  and  that  the 
inn  only  became  such  when  strangers  arrived, 
relapsing  again  immediately  into  a  private 
dwelling.  We  found  our  host  ready  to  receive 
us,  and  went  up  to  a  large  room  on  the  first 
floor.  After  due  instructions,  we  seated  our- 
selves at  the  open  windows,  —  Storg  to  sketch, 
and  I  to  take  a  mental  calotype  of  the  view. 
Among  the  many  lovely  ones  of  the  day,  this 


ITALY. 


was  the  loveliest,  —  or  was  it  only  that  the 
charm  of  repose  was  added  ?  On  our  right 
was  the  silent  castle,  and  beyond  it  the  silent 
mountains.  To  the  left  we  looked  down  ovei 
the  clustering  houses  upon  a  campagna-val- 
ley  of  peaceful  cultivation,  vineyards,  olive- 
orchards,  grain-fields  in  their  earliest  green, 
and  dark  stripes  of  new-ploughed  earth,  over 
which  the  cloud-shadows  melted  tracklessly 
toward  the  hills  which  round  softly  upward 
to  Monte  Cavi. 

When  our  dinner  came,  and  with  it  a  flask 
of  drowsy  red  Aleatico,  like  ink  with  a  sus- 
picion of  life-blood  in  it,  such  as  one  might 
fancy  Shakespeare  to  have  dipped  his  quill 
in,  we  had  our  table  so  placed  that  the  satis- 
faction of  our  hunger  might  be  dissensual- 
ized  by  the  view  from  the  windows.  Many 
a  glutton  has  eaten  up  farms  and  woodlands 
and  pastures,  and  so  did  we,  aesthetically, 
saucing  our  frittata  and  flavoring  our  Ale- 
atico with  landscape.  It  is  a  fine  thing  when 
we  can  accustom  our  animal  appetites  to  good 


ITALY. 


259 


society,  when  body  and  soul  (like  master  and 
servant  in  an  Arab  tent)  sit  down  together 
at  the  same  board.  This  thought  is  forced 
upon  one  very  often  in  Italy,  as  one  picnics 
in  enchanted  spots,  where  Imagination  and 
Fancy  play  the  parts  of  the  unseen  waiters 
in  the  fairy-story,  and  serve  us  with  course 
after  course  of  their  ethereal  dishes.  Sense 
is  satisfied  with  less  and  simpler  food  when 
sense  and  spirit  are  fed  together,  and  the 
feast  of  the  loaves  and  fishes  is  spread  for 
us  anew.  If  it  be  important  for  a  state  to 
educate  its  lower  classes,  so  is  it  for  us  per- 
sonally to  instruct,  elevate,  and  refine  our 
senses,  the  lower  classes  of  our  private  body- 
politic,  and  which,  if  left  to  their  own  brute 
instincts,  will  disorder  or  destroy  the  whole 
commonwealth  with  flaming  insurrection. 

After  dinner  came  our  guide  to  be  paid. 
He,  too,  had  had  his  frittata  and  his  fiasco  (or 
two),  and  came  back  absurdly  comic,  remind- 
ing one  of  the  giant  who  was  so  taken  in 
by  the  little  tailor.    He  was  not  in  the  least 


260 


ITALY. 


tipsy ;  but  the  wine  had  excited  his  poor  wits, 
whose  destiny  it  was  (awkward  servants  as 
they  were  !)  to  trip  up  and  tumble  over  £ach 
other  in  proportion  as  they  became  zealous. 
He  was  very  anxious  to  do  us  in  some  way  or 
other ;  he  only  vaguely  guessed  how,  but  felt 
so  gigantically  good-natured  that  he  could  not 
keep  his  face  sober  long  enough.  It  is  quite 
clear  why  the  Italians  have  no  word  but  reci- 
tare  to  express  acting,  for  their  stage  is  no 
more  theatric  than  their  street,  and  to  exag- 
gerate in  the  least  would  be  ridiculous.  We 
graver-tempered  and  -mannered  Septentrions 
must  give  the  pegs  a  screw  or  two  to  bring 
our  spirits  up  to  nature's  concert-pitch.  Storg 
and  I  sat  enjoying  the  exhibition  of  our  giant, 
as  if  we  had  no  more  concern  in  it  than  as  a 
comedy.  It  was  nothing  but  a  spectacle  to 
us,  at  which  we  were  present  as  critics,  while 
he  inveighed,  expostulated,  argued,  and  be- 
sought, in  a  breath.  Finding  all  his  attempts 
miscarry,  or  resulting  in  nothing  more  solid 
than  applause,  he  said,  "Forse  non  capiseono?' 


ITALY.  261 

(Perhaps  you  don't  undei  stand  ?)  "Capis- 
cono  pur^  troppo"  (They  understand  only  too 
well,)  replied  the  landlord,  upon  which  terrce 
filius  burst  into  a  laugh,  and  began  begging 
for  more  buonamano.  Failing  in  this,  he  tight- 
ened his  sash,  offered  to  kiss  our  lordships' 
hands,  an  act  of  homage  which  we  declined, 
and  departed,  carefully  avoiding  Genezzano 
on  his  return,  I  make  no  doubt. 

We  paid  our  bill,  and  went  down  to  the 
door,  where  we  found  our  guides  and  don- 
keys, the  host's  handsome  wife  and  handsomer 
daughter,  with  two  of  her  daughters,  and  a 
crowd  of  women  and  children  waiting  to  wit- 
ness the  exit  of  the  foreigners.  We  made  all 
the  mothers  and  children  happy  by  a  discrimi- 
nating largesse  of  copper  among  the  little  ones. 
They  are  a  charming  people,  the  natives  of 
these  out-of-the-way  Italian  towns,  if  kindness, 
courtesy,  and  good  looks  make  people  charm- 
ing. Our  beards  and  felt  hats,  which  make 
us  pass  for  artists,  were  our  passports  to  the 
warmest  welcome  and  the  best  cheer  every- 


262 


ITALY. 


where.  Reluctantly  we  mounted  our  don- 
keys, and  trotted  away,  our  guides  (a  man 
and  a  boy)  running  by  the  flank  (true  hench- 
men, haunchmen,  flanquiers  or  flunkeys)  and 
inspiring  the  little  animals  with  pokes  in  the 
side,  or  with  the  even  more  effectual  ahrrrrrrr! 
Is  there  any  radical  affinity  between  this  roll- 
ing fire  of  r's  and  the  word  arra,  which  means 
hansel  or  earnest-money?  The  sound  is  the 
same,  and  has  a  marvellous  spur-power  over 
the  donkey,  who  seems  to  understand  that  full 
payment  of  goad  or  cudgel  is  to  follow.  I 
have  known  it  to  move  even  a  Sicilian  mule, 
the  least  sensitive  and  most  obstinate  of  crea- 
tures wTith  ears,  except  a  British  church-war- 
den. 

We  wound  along  under  a  bleak  hill,  more 
desolate  than  anything  I  had  ever  seen.  The 
old  gray  rocks  seemed  not  to  thrust  themselves 
out  of  the  rusty  soil,  but  rather  to  be  stabbed 
into  it,  as  if  they  had  been  hailed  down  upon 
it  by  some  volcano.  There  was  nearly  as  much 
look  of  design  as  there  is  in  a  druidical  circle. 


ITALY. 


263 


and  the  whole  looked  like  some  graveyard  in 
an  extinguished  world,  the  monument  of  mor- 
tality itself,  such  as  Bishop  Wilkins  might  have 
found  in  the  moon,  if  he  had  ever  got  thither. 
The  path  grew  ever  wilder,  and  Rojate,  the 
next  town  we  came  to,  grim  and  grizzly,  under 
a  grim  and  grizzly  sky  of  low-trailing  clouds, 
which  had  suddenly  gathered,  looked  drearier 
even  than  the  desolations  we  had  passed.  It 
was  easy  to  understand  why  rocks  should  like 
to  live  here  well  enough ;  but  what  could  have 
brought  .men  hither,  and  then  kept  them  here, 
was  beyond  all  reasonable  surmise.  Barren 
hills  stood  sullenly  aloof  all  around,  incapable 
of  any  crop  but  lichens. 

We  entered  the  gate,  and  found  ourselves 
in  the  midst  of  a  group  of  wild-looking  men 
gathered  about  the  door  of  a  win  e-shop. 
Some  of  them  were  armed  with  long  guns, 
and  we  saw  (for  the  first  time  in  situ)  the 
tall  bandit  hat  with  ribbons  wound  round  it, 
—  such  as  one  is  familiar  with  in  operas,  and 
an  the  heads  of  those  inhabitants  of  the  Scali- 


264 


ITALY. 


nata  in  Rome,  who  have  a  costume  of  their 
own,  and  placidly  serve  as  models  through 
the  whole  pictorial  range  of  divine  and  hu- 
man nature,  from  the  Padre  Uterno  to  Ju- 
das. Twenty  years  ago,  when  my  notion 
of  an  Italian  was  divided  between  a  monk 
and  a  bravo,  the  first  of  whom  did  nothing 
but  enter  at  secret  doors  and  drink  your 
health  in  poison,  while  the  other  lived  be- 
hind corners,  supporting  himself  by  the  pro- 
ductive industry  of  digging  your  person  all 
over  with  a  stiletto,  I  should  have  looked  for 
instant  assassination  from  these  carousing  ruf- 
fians. But  the  only  blood  shed  on  the  occa- 
sion was  that  of  the  grape.  A  ride  over  the 
mountains  for  two  hours  had  made  us  thirsty, 
$nd  two  or  three  bajocchi  gave  a  tumbler  of 
vino  asciutto  to  all  four  of  us.  u  You  are 
welcome,"  said  one  of  the  men,  "we  are  all 
artists  after  a  fashion  ;  we  are  all  brothers." 
The  manners  here  are  more  republican,  and 
the  title  of  lordship  disappears  altogether.  An- 
other came  up  and  insisted  that  we  should 


ITALY. 


265 


drink  a  second  flask  of  wine  as  his  guests. 
In  vain  we  protested  ;  no  artist  should  pass 
through  Rojate  without  accepting  that  token 
of  good-will,  and  with  the  liberal  help  of  our 
guides  we  contrived  to  gulp  it  down.  He  was 
for  another ;  but  we  protested  that  Ave  were 
entirely  full,  and  that  it  was  impossible.  I 
dare  say  the  poor  fellow  would  have  spent  a 
week's  earnings  on  us,  if  we  would  have  al- 
lowed it.  We  proposed  to  return  the  civility, 
and  to  leave  a  paul  for  them  to  drink  a  good 
journey  to  us  after  we  were  gone ;  but  they 
would  not  listen  to  it.  Our  entertainer  fol- 
lowed us  along  to  the  Piazza,  begging  one  of 
us  to  let  him  serve  as  donkey-driver  to  Su- 
biaco.  When  this  was  denied,  he  said  that 
there  was  a  festa  here  also,  and  that  we  must 
stop  long  enough  to  see  the  procession  of  zi- 
idle  (young  girls),  which  would  soon  begin. 
But  evening  was  already  gathering,  the  clouds 
grew  momently  darker,  and  fierce,  damp  gusts, 
striking  us  with  the  suddenness  of  a  blow, 
promised  a  wild  night.  We  had  still  eight 
12 


266 


ITALY. 


miles  of  mountain-path  before  us,  and  we 
struggled  away.  As  we  crossed  the  next 
summit  beyond  the  town,  a  sound  of  chant- 
ing drifted  by  us  on  the  wind,  wavered  hither 
and  thither,  now  heard,  now  lost,  then  a  doubt- 
ful something  between  song  and  gust,  and, 
lingering  a  few  moments,  we  saw  the  white 
head-dresses,  gliding  two  by  two,  across  a  gap 
between  the  houses.  The  scene  and  the  mu- 
sic were  both  in  neutral  tints,  a  sketch,  as  it 
were,  in  sepia  a  little  blurred. 

Before  long  the  clouds  almost  brushed  us 
as  they  eddied  silently  by,  and  then  it  began 
to  rain,  first  mistily,  and  then  in  thick,  hard 
drops.  Fortunately  there  was  a  moon,  shin- 
ing placidly  in  the  desert  heaven  above  all 
this  turmoil,  or  we  could  not  have  found  our 
path,  which  in  a  few  moments  became  a  roar- 
ing torrent  almost  knee-deep.  It  was  a  cold 
rain,  and  far  above  us,  where  the  mountain- 
peaks  tore  gaps  in  the  clouds,  we  could  see 
the  white  silence  of  new-fallen  snow.  Some- 
times we  had  to  dismount  and  wade,  —  a  cir- 


ITALY. 


267 


cumstance  which  did  not  make  our  saddles 
more  comfortable  when  we  returned  to  them 
and  could  hear  them  go  crosh,  crosh,  as  the 
water  gurgled  out  of  them  at  every  jolt. 
There  was  no  hope  of  shelter  nearer  than  Su- 
biaco,  no  sign  of  man,  and  no  sound  but  the 
multitudinous  roar  of  waters  on  every  side. 
Rivulet  whispered  to  rivulet,  and  water-fall 
shouted  to  water-fall,  as  they  leaped  from  rock 
to  rock,  all  hurrying  to  reinforce  the  main 
torrent  below,  which  hummed  onward  toward 
the  Anio  with  dilated  heart.  So  gathered 
the  hoarse  Northern  swarms  to  descend  upon 
sunken  Italy  ;  and  so  forever  does  physical 
and  intellectual  force  seek  its  fatal  equilibri- 
um, rushing  in  and  occupying  wherever  it  is 
drawn  by  the  attraction  of  a  lower  level. 

We  forded  large  streams  that  had  been  dry 
beds  an  hour  before ;  and  so  sudden  was  the 
creation  of  the  floods,  that  it  gave  one  almost 
as  fresh  a  feeling  of  water  as  if  one  had  been 
present  in  Eden  when  the  first  rock  gave  birth 
to  the  first  fountain.    I  had  a  severe  cold,  I 


268 


ITALY. 


was  wet  through  from  the  hips  downward, 
and  yet  I  never  enjoyed  anything  more  in  my 
life,  —  so  different  is  the  shower-bath  to  which 
we  doom  ourselves  from  that  whose  string 
is  pulled  by  the  prison-warden  compulsion. 
After  our  little  bearers  had  tottered  us  up 
and  down  the  dusky  steeps  of  a  few  more 
mountain-spurs,  where  a  misstep  would  have 
sent  us  spinning  down  the  fathomless  black 
nowhere  below,  we  came  out  upon  the  high- 
road, and  found  it  a  fine  one,  as  all  the  great 
Italian  roads  are.  The  rain  broke  off  sud- 
denly, and  on  the  left,  seeming  about  half  a 
mile  away,  sparkled  the  lights  of  Subiaco,  flash- 
ing intermittently  like  a  knot  of  fire-flies  in  a 
meadow.  The  town,  owing  to  the  necessary 
windings  of  the  road,  was  still  three  miles  off, 
and  just  as  the  guides  had  progued  and  ahrred 
the  donkeys  into  a  brisk  joggle,  I  resolved  to 
give  up  my  saddle  to  the  boy,  and  try  Tom 
Coryate's  compasses.  It  wras  partly  out  of 
humanity  to  myself  and  partly  to  him,  for  he 
was  tired  and  I  was  cold.    The  elder  guide 


ITALY. 


269 


and  I  took  the  lead,  and,  as  I  looked  back,  I 
laughed  to  see  the  lolling  ears  of  Storg's  don- 
key thrust  from  under  his  long  cloak,  as  if  he 
were  coming  out  from  a  black  Arab  tent. 
We  soon  left  them  behind,  and  paused  at  a 
bridge  over  the  Anio  till  we  heard  the  patter 
of  little  hoofs  again.  The  bridge  is  a  single 
arch,  bent  between  the  steep  edges  of  a  gorge 
through  which  the  Anio  huddled  far  below, 
showing  a  green  gleam  here  and  there  in  the 
struggling  moonlight,  as  if  a  fish  rolled  up  his 
burnished  flank.  After  another  mile  and  a 
half,  we  reached  the  gate,  and  awaited  our 
companions.  It  was  dreary  enough,  —  wait- 
ing always  is,  —  and  as  the  snow-chilled  wind 
whistled  through  the  damp  archway  where  we 
stood,  my  legs  illustrated  feelingly  to  me  how 
they  cool  water  in  the  East,  by  wrapping  the 
*ars  with  wet  woollen,  and  setting  them  in  a 
draught.  At  last  they  came  ;  I  remounted, 
and  we  went  sliding  through  the  steep,  wet 
streets  till  we  had  fairly  passed  through  the 
whole  town.    Before  a  Ions:  building  of  two 


270 


ITALY. 


stories,  without  a  symptom  of  past  or  future 
light,  we  stopped.  "  JEcco  la  Paletta!"  said 
the  guide,  and  began  to  pound  furiously  on  the 
door  with  a  large  stone,  which  he  some  time 
before  had  provided  for  the  purpose.  After 
a  long  period  of  sullen  irresponsiveness,  we 
heard  descending  footsteps,  light  streamed 
through  the  chinks  of  the  door,  and  the  in- 
variable "Chi  e?"  which  precedes  the  unbar- 
ring of  all  portals  here,  came  from  within. 
"Due  forestieri"  answered  the  guide,  and  the 
bars  rattled  in  hasty  welcome.  "  Make  us," 
we  exclaimed,  as  we  stiffly  climbed  down  from 
our  perches,  "your  biggest  fire  in  your  biggest 
chimney,  and  then  we  will  talk  of  supper ! " 
In  five  minutes  two  great  laurel-fagots  were 
spitting  and  crackling  in  an  enormous  fire- 
place ;  and  Storg  and  I  were  in  the  costume 
which  Don  Quixote  wore  on  the  Brown  Moun- 
tain. Of  course  there  was  nothing  for  supper 
but  a  frittata ;  but  there  are  worse  things  in 
the  world  than  a  frittata  col  proseiutto,  and 
Ve  discussed  it  like  a  society  just  emerging 


ITALY. 


271 


from  barbarism,  the  upper  half  of  our  persons 
presenting  all  the  essentials  of  an  advanced 
civilization,  while  our  legs  skulked  under  the 
table  as  free  from  sartorial  impertinences  as 
those  of  the  noblest  savage  that  ever  ran  wild 
in  the  woods.  And  so  eecoci  finalmente  arri- 
vati! 

21th.  —  Nothing  can  be  more  lovely  than 
the  scenery  about  Subiaco.  The  town  itself 
is  built  on  a  kind  of  cone  rising  from  the 
midst  of  a  valley  abounding  in  olives  and 
vines,  with  a  superb  mountain  horizon  around 
it,  and  the  green  Anio  cascading  at  its  feet. 
As  you  walk  to  the  high-perched  convent  of 
San  Benedetto,  you  look  across  the  river  on 
your  right  just  after  leaving  the  town,  to  a  cliff 
over  which  the  ivy  pours  in  torrents,  and  in 
which  dwellings  have  been  hollowed  out.  In 
the  black  doorway  of  every  one  sits  a  woman  in 
scarlet  bodice  and  white  head-gear,  with  a  dis- 
taff, spinning,  while  overhead  countless  nightin- 
gales sing  at  once  from  the  fringe  of  shrubbery. 
The  glorious  great  white  clouds  look  over  the 


272 


ITALY. 


mountain-tops  into  our  enchanted  valley,  and 
sometimes  a  lock  of  their  vapory  wool  would 
be  torn  off,  to  lie  for  a  while  in  some  inacces- 
sible ravine  like  a  snow-drift ;  but  it  seemed 
as  if  no  shadow  could  fly  over  our  privacy  of 
sunshine  to-day.  The  approach  to  the  monas- 
tery is  delicious.  You  pass  out  of  the  hot  sun 
into  the  green  shadows  of  ancient  ilexes,  lean- 
ing and  twisting  every  way  that  is  graceful, 
their  branches  velvety  with  brilliant  moss,  in 
which  grow  feathery  ferns,  fringing  them  with 
a  halo  of  verdure.  Then  comes  the  convent, 
with  its  pleasant  old  monks,  who  show  their 
sacred  vessels  (one  by  Cellini)  and  their  relics, 
among  which  is  a  finger-bone  of  one  of  the 
Innocents.  Lower  down  is  a  convent  of  San- 
ta Scolastica,  where  the  first  book  was  printed 
in  Italy. 

But  though  one  may  have  daylight  till  af- 
ter twenty-four  o'clock  in  Italy,  the  days  are 
no  longer  than  ours,  and  I  must  go  back  to 
La  Paletta  to  see  about  a  vettura  to  Tivoli. 
I  leave  Storg  sketching,  and  walk  slowly  down, 


ITALY, 


273 


lingering  over  the  ever-changeful  views,  lin- 
gering opposite  the  nightingale-cliff,  but  get 
back  to  Subiaco  and  the  vetturino  at  last.  The 
growl  of  a  thunder-storm  soon  brought  Storg 
home,  and  we  leave  Subiaco  triumphantly,  at 
five  o'clock,  in  a  light  carriage,  drawn  by  three 
gray  stallions  (harnessed  abreast)  on  the  full 
gallop.  I  cannot  describe  our  drive,  the  moun- 
tain-towns, with  their  files  of  girls  winding  up 
from  the  fountain  with  balanced  water-jars  of 
ruddy  copper,  or  chattering  around  it  bright- 
hued  as  parrots,  the  ruined  castles,  the  green 
gleams  of  the  capricious  river,  the  one  great 
mountain  that  soaked  up  all  the  rose  of  sun- 
set, and,  after  all  else  grew  dim,  still  glowed 
as  if  with  inward  fires,  and,  later,  the  white 
spray  smoke  of  Tivoli  that  drove  down  the 
valley  under  a  clear  cold  moon,  contrasting 
strangely  wTith  the  red  glare  of  the  lime- 
furnace  on  the  opposite  hillside.  It  is  well 
that  we  can  be  happy  sometimes  without  peep- 
ing and  botanizing  in  the  materials  that  make 
as  so.    It  is  not  often  that  we  can  escape  the 

12*  B 


274 


ITALY. 


evil  genius  of  analysis  that  haunts  our  mod- 
ern daylight  of  self-consciousness  (ww  haben 
ja  aufgeklart!^)  and  enjoy  a  day  of  right 
Chaucer. 

P.  S.  Now  that  I  am  printing  this,  a  dear 
friend  sends  me  an  old  letter,  and  says,  "  Slip 
in  somewhere,  by  way  of  contrast,  what  you 
wrote  me  of  your  visit  to  Passawampscot." 
It  is  odd,  almost  painful,  to  be  confronted 
with  your  past  self  and  your  past  self's  doings, 
when  you  have  forgotten  both.  But  here  is 
my  bit  of  American  scenery,  such  as  it  is. 

While  we  were  waiting  for  the  boat,  wre 
had  time  to  investigate  P.  a  little.  We  wan- 
dered about  with  no  one  to  molest  us  or  make 
us  afraid.  No  cicerone  was  lying  in  wait  for 
us,  no  verger  expected  with  funeral  solemnity 
the  more  than  compulsory  shilling.  I  remem- 
ber the  whole  population  of  Cortona  gathering 
round  me,  and  beseeching  me  not  to  leave 
their  city  till  I  had  seen  the  lampadone,  whose 
keeper  had  unhappily  gone  out  to  walk,  taking 


ITALY. 


275 


the  key  with  him.  Thank  Fortune,  here  were 
no  antiquities,  no  galleries  of  Pre-Raphaelite 
art,  every  lank  figure  looking  as  if  it  had  been 
stretched  on  a  rack,  before  which  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  writhes  because  he  ought  to  like  them 
and  cannot  for  the  soul  of  him.  It  is  a  pretty 
little  village,  cuddled  down  among  the  hills, 
the  clay  soil  of  which  gives  them,  to  a  pilgrim 
from  the  parched  gravelly  inland,  a  look  of  al- 
most fanatical  green.  The  fields  are  broad, 
and  wholly  given  up  to  the  grazing  of  cattle 
and  sheep,  which  dotted  them  thickly  in  the 
breezy  sunshine.  The  open  doors  of  a  barn, 
through  which  the  wind  flowed  rustling  the 
loose  locks  of  the  mow,  attracted  us.  Swal- 
lows swam  in  and  out  with  level  wings,  or 
crossed  each  other,  twittering  in  the  dusky 
mouth  of  their  hay-scented  cavern.  Two  or 
three  hens  and  a  cock  (none  of  your  gawky 
Shanghais,  long-legged  as  a  French  peasant 
on  his  stilts,  but  the  true  red  cock  of  the  bal- 
lads, full-chested,  coral-combed,  fountain-tailed) 
were  inquiring  for  hay-seed  in  the  background. 


276 


ITALY. 


What  frame  in  what  gallery  ever  enclosed  such 
a  picture  as  is  squared  within  the  groundsel, 
side-posts,  and  lintel  of  a  barn-door,  whether 
for  eye  or  fancy  ?  The  shining  floor  suggests 
the  flail-beat  of  autumn,  that  pleasantest  of 
monotonous  sounds,  and  the  later  husking- 
bee,  where  the  lads  and  lasses  sit  round  laugh- 
ingly busy  under  the  swinging  lantern. 

Here  we  found  a  fine,  stalwart  fellow  shear- 
ing sheep.  This  was  something  new  to  us, 
and  we  watched  him  for  some  time  with  many 
questions,  which  he  answered  with  off-hand 
good-nature.  Going  away,  I  thanked  him  for 
having  taught  me-  something.  He  laughed, 
and  said,  "  Ef  you  '11  take  off  them  gloves  o' 
yourn,  I  '11  give  ye  a  try  at  the  practical  part 
on 't."  He  was  in  the  right  of  it.  I  never 
saw  anything  handsomer  than  those  brown 
hands  of  his,  on  which  the  sinews  stood  out, 
as  he  handled  his  shears,  tight  as  a  drawn  bow- 
string. How  much  more  admirable  is  this 
tawny  vigor,  the  badge  of  fruitful  toil,  than 
the  crop  of  early  muscle  that  heads  out  under 


ITALY. 


277 


the  forcing-glass  of  the  gymnasium  !  Foreign- 
ers do  not  feel  easy  in  America,  because  there 
are  no  peasants  and  underlings  here  to  be  hum- 
ble to  them.  The  truth  is,  that  none  but  those 
who  feel  themselves  only  artificially  the  supe- 
riors of  our  sturdy  yeomen  see  in  their  self- 
respect  any  uncomfortable  assumption  of  equal- 
ity. It  is  the  last  thing  the  yeoman  is  likely 
to  think  of.  They  do  not  like  the  "  I  say,  ma 
good  fellah"  kind  of  style,  and  commonly  con- 
trive to  snub  it.  They  do  not  value  conde- 
scension at  the  same  rate  that  he  does  who 
vouchsafes  it  to  them.  If  it  be  a  good  thing 
for  an  English  duke  that  he  has  no  social  su- 
periors, I  think  it  can  hardly  be  bad  for  a 
Yankee  farmer.  If  it  be  a  bad  thing  for  the 
duke  that  he  meets  none  but  inferiors,  it  can- 
not harm  the  farmer  much  that  he  never  has 
the  chance.  At  any  rate,  there  was  no  thought 
of  incivility  in  my  friend  HobbinoPs  jibe  at 
niy  kids,  only  a  kind  of  jolly  superiority.  But 
I  did  not  like  to  be  taken  for  a  city  gent,  so 
I  told  him  I  was  born  and  bred  in  the  coun- 


278 


ITALY. 


try  as  well  as  he.  He  laughed  again,  and 
said,  "  Wal,  anyhow,  I  've  the  advantage  of 
ye,  for  you  never  see  a  sheep  shore,  an'  I 've 
ben  to  the  Opery  and  shore  sheep  myself  into 
the  bargain  "  He  told  me  that  there  were 
two  hundred  sheep  in  the  town,  and  that  his 
father  could  remember  when  there  were  four 
times  as  many.  The  sea  laps  and  mumbles 
the  soft  roots  of  the  hills,  and  licks  away  an 
acre  or  two  of  good  pasturage  every  season. 
The  father,  an  old  man  of  eighty,  stood  look- 
ing on,  pleased  with  his  son's  wit,  and  brown 
as  if  the  Passawampscot  fogs  were  walnut- 
juice. 

We  dined  at  a  little  tavern,  with  a  gilded 
ball  hung  out  for  sign,  —  a  waif,  I  fancy,  from 
some  shipwreck.  The  landlady  was  a  brisk, 
amusing  little  body,  who  soon  informed  us  that 
her  husband  was  own  cousin  to  a  Senator  of 
the  United  States.  A  very  elaborate  sampler 
in  the  parlor,  in  which  an  obelisk  was  wept 
over  by  a  somewhat  costly  willow  in  silver 
thread,  recorded  the  virtues  of  the  Senator's 


ITALY. 


279 


maternal  grandfather  and  grandmother.  Af- 
ter dinner,  as  we  sat  smoking  our  pipes  on 
the  piazza,  our  good  hostess  brought  her  little 
daughter,  and  made  her  repeat  verses  utterly 
unintelligible,  but  conjecturally  moral,  and  cer- 
tainly depressing.  Once  set  agoing,  she  ran 
down  like  an  alarm-clock.  We  awaited  her 
subsidence  as  that  of  a  shower  or  other  inevi- 
table natural  phenomenon.  More  refreshing 
was  the  talk  of  a  tall  returned  Californian,  who 
told  us,  among  other  things,  that  "  he  should 
n't  mind  Panahmy's  bein'  sunk,  oilers  provid- 
in'  there  warn't  none  of  our  folks  onto  it  when 
it  went  down  !  " 

Our.  landlady's  exhibition  of  her  daughter 
puts  me  in  mind  of  something  similar,  yet 
oddly  different,  which  happened  to  Storg  and 
me  at  Palestrina.  We  happened  to  praise 
the  beauty  of  our  stout  locandiera's  little  girl. 
"Ah,  she  is  nothing  to  her  elder  sister  just 
married,"  said  the  mother.  "  If  you  could 
see  her!  She  is  bella,  bella,  bella  ! "  We 
thought  no  more  of  it ;  but  after  dinner,  the 


280 


ITALY. 


good  creature,  with  no  warning  but  a  tap  at 
the  door  and  a  humble  con  permesso,  brought 
her  in  all  her  bravery,  and  showed  her  off  to 
us  as  simply  and  naturally  as  if  she  had  been 
a  picture.  The  girl,  who  was  both  beautiful 
and  modest,  bore  it  with  the  dignified  aplomb 
of  a  statue.  She  knew  we  admired  her,  and 
liked  it,  but  with  the  indifference  of  a  rose. 
There  is  something  very  charming,  I  think, 
in  this  wholly  unsophisticated  consciousness, 
with  no  alloy  of  vanity  or  coquetry. 


A  FEW  BITS  OP  ROMAN  MOSAIC. 


BYRON  hit  the  white,  which  he  often  shot 
very  wide  of  in  his  Italian  Guide-Book, 
when  he  called  Rome  "  my  country."  But  it 
is  a  feeling  which  comes  to  one  slowly,  and 
is  absorbed  into  one's  system  during  a  long 
residence.  Perhaps  one  does  not  feel  it  till 
he  has  gone  away,  as  things  always  seem  fairer 
when  we  look  back  at  them,  and  it  is  out  of 
that  inaccessible  tower  of  the  past  that  Long- 
ing leans  and  beckons.  However  it  be,  Fancy 
gets  a  rude  shock  at  entering  Rome,  which  it 
takes  her  a  great  while  to  get  over.  She  has 
gradually  made  herself  believe  that  she  is  ap- 
proaching a  city  of  the  dead,  and  has  seen 
nothing  on  the  road  from  Civita  Vecchia  to 
disturb  that  theory.  Milestones,  with  "  Via 
Aurelia"  carved  upon  them,  have  confirmed 


282 


A  FEW  BITS 


it.  It  is  eighteen  hundred  years  ago  with 
her,  and  on  the  dial  of  time  the  shadow  has 
not  yet  trembled  over  the  line  that  marks  the 
beginning  of  the  first  century.  She  arrives 
at  the  gate,  and  a  dirty,  blue  man,  with  a 
cocked  hat  and  a  white  sword-belt,  asks  for 
her  passport.  Then  another  man,  as  like  the 
first  as  one  spoon  is  like  its  fellow,  and  hav- 
ing, like  him,  the  look  of  being  run  in  a 
mould,  tells  her  that  she  must  go  to  the 
custom-house.  It  is  as  if  a  ghost,  who  had 
scarcely  recovered  from  the  jar  of  hearing 
Charon  say,  "  I  '11  trouble  you  for  your  obo- 
lus,  if  you  please,"  should  have  his  portman- 
teau seized  by  the  Stygian  tide-waiters  to  be 
searched.  Is  there  anything,  then,  contra- 
band of  death  ?  asks  poor  Fancy  of  herself. 

But  it  is  the  misfortune  (or  the  safeguard) 
of  the  English  mind  that  Fancy  is  always  an 
outlaw,  liable  to  be  laid  by  the  heels  wherever 
Constable  Common  Sense  can  catch  her.  She 
submits  quietly  as  the  postilion  cries,  "Yee* 
ip!"  and  cracks  his  whip,  and  the  rattle  over 


OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC. 


283 


the  pavement  begins,  struggles  a  moment  when 
the  pillars  of  the  colonnade  stalk  ghostly  by 
in  the  moonlight,  and  finally  gives  up  all  for 
lost  when  she  sees  Bernini's  angels  polking  on 
their  pedestals  along  the  sides  of  the  Ponte 
Sant'  Angelo  with  the  emblems  of  the  Passion 
in  their  arms. 

You  are  in  Rome,  of  course ;  the  sbirro 
said  so,  the  doganiere  bowed  it,  and  the  pos- 
tilion swore  it;  but  it  is  a  Rome  of  modern 
houses,  muddy  streets,  dingy  caffes,  cigar- 
smokers,  and  French  soldiers,  the  manifest 
junior  of  Florence.  And  yet  full  of  anachro- 
nisms, for  in  a  little  while  you  pass  the  col- 
umn of  Antoninus,  find  the  Dogana  in  an 
ancient  temple  whose  furrowed  pillars  show 
through  the  recent  plaster,  and  feel  as  if  you 
saw  the  statue  of  Minerva  in  a  Paris  bonnet. 
You  are  driven  to  a  hotel  where  all  the  bar- 
barian languages  are  spoken  in  one  wild  con- 
glomerate by  the  Commissionnaire,  have  your 
dinner  wholly  in  French,  and  wake  the  next 
morning  dreaming  of  the  Tenth  Legion,  to  see 


284 


A  FEW  BITS 


a  regiment  of  Chasseurs  de  Vincermes  trot- 
ting by. 

For  a  few  days  one  undergoes  a  tremen- 
dous recoil.  Other  places  have  a  distinct 
meaning.  London  is  the  visible  throne  of 
King  Stock ;  Versailles  is  the  apotheosis  of 
one  of  Louis  XIV. 's  cast  periwigs  ;  Florence 
and  Pisa  are  cities  of  the  Middle  Ages  ;  but 
Rome  seems  to  be  a  parody  upon  itself.  The 
ticket  that  admits  you  to  see  the  starting  of 
the  horses  at  carnival,  has  S.  P.  Q.  R.  at  the 
top  of  it,  and  you  give  the  custode  a  paul  for 
showing  you  the  wolf  that  suckled  Romulus 
and  Remus.  The  Senatus  seems  to  be  a  score 
or  so  of  elderly  gentlemen  in  scarlet,  and 
the  Populusque  Romanus  a  swarm  of  nasty 
friars. 

But  there  is  something  more  than  mere 
earth  in  the  spot  where  great  deeds  have  been 
done.  The  surveyor  cannot  give  the  true  di- 
mensions of  Marathon  or  Lexington,  for  they 
are  not  reducible  to  square  acres.  Dead  glory 
and  greatness  leave  ghosts  behind  them,  and 


OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC, 


285 


departed  empire  has  a  metempsychosis,  if 
nothing  else  has.  Its  spirit .  haunts  the  grave, 
and  waits,  and  waits  till  at  last  it  finds  a  body 
to  its  mind,  slips  into  it,  and  historians  moral- 
ize on  the  fluctuation  of  human  affairs.  By 
and  by,  perhaps,  enough  observations  will  have 
been  recorded  to  assure  us  that  these  recur- 
rences are  firmamental,  and  historionomers 
will  have  measured  accurately  the  sidereal 
years  of  races.  When  that  is  once  done, 
events  will  move  with  the  quiet  of  an  orrery, 
and  nations  will  consent  to  their  peridynamis 
and  apodynamis  with  planetary  composure. 

Be  this  as  it  may,  you  become  gradually 
aware  of  the  presence  of  this  imperial  ghost 
among  the  Roman  ruins.  You  receive  hints 
and  startles  of  it  through  the  senses  first,  as 
the  horse  always  shies  at  the  apparition  before 
the  rider  can  see  it.  Then,  little  by  little, 
you  become  assured  of  it,  and  seem  to  hear 
the  brush  of  its  mantle  through  some  hall  of 
Caracalla's  baths,  or  one  of  those  other  soli- 
hides  of  Rome.   And  those  solitudes  are  with 


286 


A  FEW  BITS 


out  a  parallel ;  for  it  is  not  the  mere  absence 
of  man,  but  the  sense  of  his  departure,  that 
makes  a  profound  loneliness.  Musing  upon 
them,  you  cannot  but  feel  the  shadow  of  that 
disembodied  empire,  and,  remembering  how 
the  foundations  of  the  Capitol  were  laid  where 
a  head  was  turned  up,  you  are  impelled  to 
prophesy  that  the  Idea  of  Rome  will  incarnate 
itself  again  as  soon  as  an  Italian  brain  is  found 
large  enough  to  hold  it,  and  to  give  unity  to 
those  discordant  members. 

But,  though  I  intend  to  observe  no  regular 
pattern  in  my  Roman  mosaic,  which  will  re- 
semble more  what  one  finds  in  his  pockets 
after  a  walk,  —  a  pagan  cube  or  two  from  the 
palaces  of  the  Caesars,  a  few  Byzantine  bits, 
given  with  many  shrugs  of  secrecy  by  a  lay- 
brother  at  San  Paolo  fuori  le  mura,  and  a  few 
more  (quite  as  ancient)  from  the  manufactory 
at  the  Vatican,  —  it  seems  natural  to  begin 
what  one  has  to  say  of  Rome  with  something 
about  St.  Peter's ;  for  the  saint  sits  at  the 
gate  here  as  well  as  in  Paradise. 


OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC.  287 


It  is  very  common  for  people  to  say  that 
they  are  disappointed  in  the  first  sight  of  St. 
Peter's  ;  and  one  hears  much  the  same  about 
Niagara.  I  cannot  help  thinking  that  the 
fault  is  in  themselves  ;  and  that  if  the  church 
and  the  cataract  were  in  the  habit  of  giving 
away  their  thoughts  with  that  rash  generosity 
which  characterizes  tourists,  they  might  per- 
haps say  of  their  visitors,  "  Well,  if  you  are 
those  men  of  whom  we  have  heard  so  much, 
we  are  a  little  disappointed,  to  tell  the  truth!" 
The  refined  tourist  expects  somewhat  too 
much  when  he  takes  it  for  granted  that  St. 
Peter's  will  at  once  decorate  him  with  the  or- 
der of  imagination,  just  as  Victoria  knights  an 
alderman  when  he  presents  an  address.  Or 
perhaps  he  has  been  getting  up  a  little  archi- 
tecture on  the  road  from  Florence,  and  is  dis- 
comfited because  he  does  not  know  whether 
he  ought  to  be  pleased  or  not,  which  is  very 
much  as  if  he  should  wait  to  be  told  whether 
it  was  fresh  water  or  salt  which  makes  the 
exhaustless  grace  of  Niagara's  emerald  curve, 


288 


A  FEW  BITS 


before  he  benignly  consented  to  approve.  It 
would  be  wiser,  perhaps,  for  him  to  consider 
whether,  if  Michael  Angelo  had  had  the  build- 
ing of  hint,  his  own  personal  style  would  not 
have  been  more  impressive. 

It  is  not  to  be  doubted  that  minds  are  of  as 
many  different  orders  as  cathedrals,  and  that 
the  Gothic  imagination  is  vexed  and  discom- 
moded in  the  vain  endeavor  to  flatten  its  pin- 
nacles, and  fit  itself  into  the  round  Roman 
arches.  But  if  it  be  impossible  for  a  man  to 
like  everything,  it  is  quite  possible  ,for  him  to 
avoid  being  driven  mad  by  what  does  not 
please  him ;  nay,  it  is  the  imperative  duty  of 
a  wise  man  to  find  out  what  that  secret  is 
which  makes  a  thing  pleasing  to  another.  In 
approaching  St.  Peter's,  one  must  take  his 
Protestant  shoes  off  his  feet,  and  leave  them 
behind  him,  in  the  Piazza  Rusticucci.  Other- 
wise the  great  Basilica,  with  those  outstretch- 
ing colonnades  of  Bramante,  will  seem  to  be 
a  bloated  spider  lying  in  wTait  for  him,  the  poor 
Reformed  fly.    As  he  lifts  the  heavy  leathern 


OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC.  289 


flapper  over  the  door,  and  is  discharged  into 
the  interior  by  its  impetuous  recoil,  let  him 
disburden  his  mind  altogether  of  stone  and 
mortar,  and  think  only  that  he  is  standing 
before  the  throne  of  a  dynasty  which,  even 
in  its  decay,  is  the  most  powerful  the  world 
ever  saw.  Mason-work  is  all  very  well  in  it- 
self, but  it  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  affair 
at  present  in  hand. 

Suppose  that  a  man  in  pouring  down  a  glass 
of  claret  could  drink  the  South  of  France,  that 
he  could  so  disintegrate  the  wine  by  the  force 
of  imagination  as  to  taste  in  it  all  the  clustered 
beauty  and  bloom  of  the  grape,  all  the  dance 
and  song  and  sunburnt  jollity  of  the  vintage. 
Or  suppose  that  in  eating  bread  he  could  tran- 
substantiate it  with  the  tender  blade  of  spring, 
the  gleam-flitted  corn-ocean  of  summer,  the 
royal  autumn,  with  its  golden  beard,  and  the 
merry  funerals  of  harvest.  This  is  what  the 
great  poets  do  for  us,  we  cannot  tell  how,  with 
their  fatally-chosen  words,  crowding  the  happy 
veins  of  language  again  with  all  the  life  and 

13  s 


290  A  FEW  BITS 

meaning  and  music  that  had  been  dribbling 
away  from  them  since  Adam.  And  this  is 
what  the  Roman  Church  does  for  religion, 
feeding  the  soul  not  with  the  essential  re- 
ligious sentiment,  not  with  a  drop  or  two  of 
the  tincture  of  worship,  but  making  us  feel 
one  by  one  all  those  original  elements  of  which 
worship  is  composed  ;  not  bringing  the  end  to 
us,  but  making  us  pass  over  and  feel  beneath 
our  feet  all  the  golden  rounds  of  the  lad- 
der by  which  the  climbing  generations  have 
reached  that  end ;  not  handing  us  drily  a 
dead  and  extinguished  Q.  E.  D.,  but  letting 
it  rather  declare  itself  by  the  glory  with  which 
it  interfuses  the  incense-clouds  of  wonder  and 
aspiration  and  beauty  in  which  it  is  veiled. 
The  secret  of  her  power  is  typified  in  the 
mystery  of  the  Real  Presence.  She  is  the 
only  church  that  has  been  loyal  to  the  heart 
and  soul  of  man,  that  has  clung  to  her  faith 
in  the  imagination,  and  that  would  not  give 
over  her  symbols  and  images  and  sacred  ves- 
sels to  the  perilous  keeping  of  the  iconoclast 


OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC. 


291 


Understanding.  She  has  never  lost  sight  of 
the  truth,  that  the  product  human  nature  is 
composed  of  the  sum  of  flesh  and  spirit,  and 
has  accordingly  regarded  both  this  world  and 
the  next  as  the  constituents  of  that  other 
world  which  we  possess  by  faith.  She  knows 
that  poor  Panza,  the  body,  has  his  kitchen 
longings  and  visions,  as  well  as  Quixote,  the 
soul,  his  ethereal,  and  has  wit  enough  to  sup- 
ply him  with  the  visible,  tangible  raw  mate- 
rial of  imagination.  She  is  the  only  poet 
among  the  churches,  and,  while  Protestantism 
is  unrolling  a  pocket  surveyor's-plan,  takes 
her  votary  to  the  pinnacle  of  her  temple,  and 
shows  him  meadow,  upland,  and  tillage,  cloudy 
heaps  of  forest  clasped  with  the  river's  jew- 
elled arm,  hillsides  white  with  the  perpetual 
snow  of  flocks,  and,  beyond  all,  the  intermina- 
ble heave  of  the  unknown  ocean.  Her  empire 
may  be  traced  upon  the  map  by  the  bounda- 
ries of  races  ;  the  understanding  is  her  great 
foe  ;  and  it  is  the  people  whose  vocabulary 
was  incomplete  till  they  had  invented  the  arch- 


292 


A  FEW  BITS 


word  Humbug  that  defies  her.  With  that 
leaden  bullet  John  Bull  can  bring  down  Sen- 
timent when  she  flies  her  highest.  And  the 
more  the  pity  for  John  Bull.  One  of  these 
days  some  one  whose  eyes  are  sharp  enough 
will  read  in  the  Times  a  standing  advertise- 
ment, — "  Lost,  strayed,  or  stolen  from  the 
farm-yard  of  the  subscriber  the  valuable  horse 
Pegasus.  Probably  has  on  him  part  of  a  new 
plough-harness,  as  that  is  also  missing.  A 
suitable  reward,  etc.  J.  Bull." 

Protestantism  reverses  the  poetical  process 
I  have  spoken  of  above,  and  gives  not  even 
the  bread  of  life,  but  instead  of  it  the  alcohol, 
or  distilled  intellectual  result.  This  was  very 
well  so  long  as  Protestantism  continued  to 
protest ;  for  enthusiasm  sublimates  the  under- 
standing into  imagination.  But  now  that  she 
also  has  become  an  establishment,  she  begins 
to  perceive  that  she  made  a  blunder  in  trust- 
ing herself  to  the  intellect  alone.  She  is  be- 
ginning to  feel  her  way  back  again,  as  one 
notices  in  Puseyism,  and  other  such  hints 


OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC, 


293 


One  is  put  upon  reflection  when  he  sees  bur- 
ly Englishmen,  who  dine  on  beef  and  porter 
every  day,  marching  proudly  through  Saint 
Peter's  on  Palm  Sunday,  with  those  fright- 
fully artificial  palm-branches  in  their  hands. 
Romanism  wisely  provides  for  the  childish  in 
men. 

Therefore  I  say  again,  that  one  must  lay 
aside  his  Protestantism  in  order  to  have  a  true 
feeling  of  Saint  Peter's.  Here  in  Rome  is  the 
laboratory  of  that  mysterious  enchantress,  who 
has  known  so  well  how  to  adapt  herself  to  all 
the  wants,  or,  if  you  will,  the  weaknesses  of 
human  nature,  making  the  retirement  of  the 
convent-cell  a  merit  to  the  solitary,  the  scourge 
or  the  fast  a  piety  to  the  ascetic,  the  enjoy- 
ment of  pomp  and  music  and  incense  a  relig- 
ious act  in  the  sensual,  and  furnishing  for  the 
very  soul  itself  a  confidante  in  that  ear  of  the 
dumb  confessional,  where  it  may  securely  dis- 
burden itself  of  its  sins  and  sorrows.  And 
the  dome  of  St.  Peter's  is  the  magic  circle 
within  which  she  works  her  most  potent  in 


294 


A  FEW  BITS 


cantations.  I  confess  that  I  could  not  enter 
it  alone  without  a  kind  of  awe. 

But,  setting  entirely  aside  the  effect  of  this 
church  upon  the  imagination,  it  is  wonderful, 
if  one  consider  it  only  materially.  Michael 
Angelo  created  a  new  world  in  which  every- 
thing was  colossal,  and  it  might  seem  that  he 
built  this  as  a  fit  temple  for  those  gigantic 
figures  with  which  he  peopled  it  to  worship 
in.  Here  his  Moses  should  be  high-priest, 
the  service  should  be  chanted  by  his  prophets 
and  sibyls,  and  those  great  pagans  should  be 
brought  hither  from  San  Lorenzo  in  Florence, 
to  receive  baptism. 

However  unsatisfactory  in  other  matters, 
statistics  are  of  service  here.  I  have  seen  a 
refined  tourist  who  entered,  Murray  in  hand, 
sternly  resolved  to  have  St.  Peter's  look  small, 
brought  to  terms  at  once  by  being  told  that 
the  canopy  over  the  high  altar  (looking  very 
like  a  four-post  bedstead)  was  ninety-eight 
feet  high.  If  he  still  obstinates  himself,  he  is 
finished  by  being  made  to  measure  one  of  the 


OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC. 


295 


marble  putti,  which  look  like  rather  stoutish 
babies,  and  are  found  to  be  six  feet,  every 
sculptor's  son  of  them.  This  ceremony  is  the 
more  interesting,  as  it  enables  him  to  satisfy 
the  guide  of  his  proficiency  in  the  Italian 
tongue  by  calling  them  putty  at  every  con- 
venient opportunity.  Otherwise  both  he  and 
his  assistant  terrify  each  other  into  mutual 
unintelligibility  with  that  lingua  franca  of  the 
English-speaking  traveller,  which  is  supposed 
to  bear  some  remote  affinity  to  the  French 
language,  of  which  both  parties  are  as  igno- 
rant as  an  American  Ambassador. 

Murray  gives  all  these  little  statistical  nudges 
to  the  Anglo-Saxon  imagination  ;  but  he  knows 
that  its  finest  nerves  are  in  the  pocket,  and 
accordingly  ends  by  telling  you  how  much  the 
church  cost.  I  forget  how  much  it  is ;  but  it 
cannot  be  more,  I  fancy,  than  the  English 
national  debt  multiplied  into  itsdf  three  hun- 
dred and  sixty-five  times.  If  the  pilgrim, 
honestly  anxious  for  a  sensation,  will  work  out 
this  little  sum,  he  will  be  sure  to  receive  all 


296 


A  FEW  BITS 


that  enlargement  of  the  imaginative  faculty 
which  arithmetic  can  give  him.  Perhaps  the 
most  dilating  fact,  after  all,  is  that  this  archi- 
tectural world  has  also  a  separate  atmosphere, 
distinct  from  that  of  Rome  by  some  ten  de- 
grees, and  unvarying  through  the  year. 

I  think  that,  on  the  whole,  Jonathan  gets 
ready  to  be  pleased  with  St.  Peter's  sooner 
than  Bull.  Accustomed  to  our  lath  and  plas- 
ter expedients  for  churches,  the  portable  sen- 
try-boxes of  Zion,  mere  solidity  and  perma- 
nence are  pleasurable  in  themselves  ;  and  if 
he  get  grandeur  also,  he  has  Gospel  measure. 
Besides,  it  is  easy  for  Jonathan  to  travel.  He 
is  one  drop  of  a  fluid  mass,  who  knows  where 
his  home  is  to-day,  but  can  make  no  guess  of 
where  it  may  be  to-morrow.  Even  in  a  form 
of  government  he  only  takes  lodgings  for  the 
night,  and  is  ready  to  pay  his  bill  and  be  off 
in  the  morning.  He  should  take  his  motto 
from  Bishop  Golias's  "Mihi  est  propositum  in 
+abern&  mori"  though  not  in  the  sufistic  sense 
of  that  misunderstood  Churchman.    But  Bui] 


OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC.  297 

can  seldom  be  said  to  travel  at  all,  since  the 
first  step  of  a  true  traveller  is  out  of  himself. 
He  plays  cricket  and  hunts  foxes  on  the  Cam- 
pagria,  makes  entries  in  his  betting-book  while 
the  Pope  is  giving  his  benediction,  and  points 
out  Lord  Calico  to  you  awfully  during  the  Sis- 
tine  Miserere.  If  he  let  his  beard  grow,  it 
always  has  a  startled  air,  as  if  it  suddenly  re- 
membered its  treason  to  Sheffield,  and  only 
makes  him  look  more  English  than  ever.  A 
masquerade  is  impossible  to  him,  and  his  fancy 
balls  are  the  solemnest  facts  in  the  world. 
Accordingly,  he  enters  St.  Peter's  with  the 
dome  of  St.  Paul's  drawn  tight  over  his  eyes, 
like  a  criminal's  cap,  and  ready  for  instant 
execution  rather  than  confess  that  the  English 
Wren  had  not  a  stronger  wing  than  the  Italian 
Angel.  I  like  this  in  Bull,  and  it  renders  him 
the  pleasantest  of  travelling-companions  ;  for 
he  makes  you  take  England  along  with  you, 
and  thus  you  have  two  countries  at  once. 
And  one  must  not  forget  in  an  Italian  inn 
that  it  is  to  Bull  he  owes  the  clean  napkins 

13* 


298 


4  FEW  BITS 


and  sheets,  and  the  privilege  of  his  morning 
bath.    Nor  should  Bull  himself  fail  to  reraem 
ber  that  he  ate  with  his  fingers  till  the  Italian 
gave  him  a  fork. 

Browning  has  given  the  best  picture  of  St. 
Peter's  on  a  festival-day,  sketching  it  with  a 
few  verses  in  his  large  style.  And  doubt- 
less it  is  the  scene  of  the  grandest  spectacles 
which  the  world  can  see  in  these  latter  days. 
Those  Easter  pomps,  where  the  antique  world 
marches  visibly  before  you  in  gilded  mail  and 
crimson  doublet,  refresh  the  eyes,  and  are  good 
so  long  as  they  continue  to  be  merely  spectacle. 
But  if  one  think  for  a  moment  of  the  servant 
of  the  servants  of  the  Lord  in  cloth  of  gold, 
borne  on  men's  shoulders,  or  of  the  children  re- 
ceiving the  blessing  of  their  Holy  Father,  with 
a  regiment  of  French  soldiers  to  protect  the  fa- 
ther from  the  children,  it  becomes  a  little  sad. 
If  one  would  feel  the  full  meaning  of  those 
ceremonials,  however,  let  him  consider  the  co- 
incidences between  the  Romish  and  the  Bud- 
Ihist  fovms  of  worship,  and  remembering  that 


OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC.  299 


the  Pope  is  the  direct  heir,  through  the  Pon- 
tifex  Maximus,  of  rites  that  were  ancient  when 
the  Etruscans  were  modern,  he  will  look  with 
a  feeling  deeper  than  curiosity  upon  forms 
which  record  the  earliest  conquests  of  the  In- 
visible, the  first  triumphs  of  mind  over  muscle. 

To  me  the  noon  silence  and  solitude  of  St. 
Peter's  were  most  impressive,  when  the  sun- 
light, made  visible  by  the  mist  of  the  ever- 
burning lamps  in  which  it  was  entangled, 
hovered  under  the  dome  like  the  holy  dove 
goldenly  descending.  Very  grand  also  is  the 
twilight,  when  all  outlines  melt  into  myste- 
rious vastness,  and  the  arches  expand  and  lose 
themselves  in  the  deepening  shadow.  Then, 
standing  in  the  desert  transept,  you  hear  the 
far-off  vespers  swell  and  die  like  low  breath- 
ings of  the  sea  on  some  conjectured  shore. 

As  the  sky  is  supposed  to  scatter  its  golden 
star-pollen  once  every  year  in  meteoric  show- 
ers, so  the  dome  of  St.  Peter's  has  its  annual 
efflorescence  of  fire.  This  illumination  is  the 
great  show  of  Papal  Rome.    Just  after  sunset. 


300 


A  FEW  BITS 


I  stood  upon  the  Trinita  dei  Monti  and  saw 
the  little  drops  of  pale  light  creeping  down- 
ward from  the  cross  and  trickling  over  the 
dome,  Then,  as  the  sky  darkened  behind, 
it  seemed  as  if  the  setting  sun  had  lodged 
upon  the  horizon  and  there  burned  out,  the 
fire  still  clinging  to  his  massy  ribs.  And 
when  the  change  from  the  silver  to  the  golden 
illumination  came,  it  was  as  if  the  breeze  had 
fanned  the  embers  into  flame  again. 

Bitten  with  the  Anglo-Saxon  gadfly  that 
drives  us  all  to  disenchant  artifice,  and  see  the 
springs  that  fix  it  on,  I  walked  down  to  get  a 
nearer  look.  My  next  glimpse  was  from  the 
bridge  of  Sant'  Angelo ;  but  there  was  no  time 
nor  space  for  pause.  Foot-passengers  crowd- 
ing hither  and  thither,  as  they  heard  the  shout 
of  Avanti!  from  the  mile  of%coachmen  behind, 
dragoon-horses  curtsying  backward  just  where 
there  were  most  women  and  children  to  be 
flattened,  and  the  dome  drawing  all  eyes  and 
thoughts  the  wrong  way,  made  a  hubbub  to 
be  got  out  of  at  any  desperate  hazard.  Be- 


OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC.  301 


sides,  one  could  not  help  feeling  nervously- 
hurried  ;  for  it  seemed  quite  plain  to  every- 
body that  this  starry  apparition  must  be  as 
momentary  as  it  was  wonderful,  and  that  we 
should  find  it  vanished  when  we  reached  the 
piazza.  But  suddenly  you  stand  in  front  of 
it,  and  see  the  soft  travertine  of  the  front  suf- 
fused with  a  tremulous,  glooming  glow,  a  mild- 
ened  glory,  as  if  the  building  breathed,  and  so 
transmuted  its  shadow  into  soft  pulses  of  light. 

After  wondering  long  enough,  I  went  back 
to  the  Pincio,  and  watched  it  for  an  hour 
longer.  But  I  did  not  wish  to  see  it  go  out. 
It  seemed  better  to  go  home  and  leave  it  still 
trembling,  so  that  I  could  fancy  a  kind  of  per- 
manence in  it,  and  half  believe  I  should  find 
it  there  again  some  lucky  evening.  Before 
leaving  it  altogether,  I  went  away  to  cool 
my  eyes  with  darkness,  and  came  back  sev- 
eral times ;  and  every  time  it  was  a  new 
miracle,  the  more  so  that  it  was  a  human 
piece  of  faery-work.  Beautiful  as  fire  is  in 
itself,  I  suspect  that  part  of  the  pleasure  is 


302 


A  FEW  BITS 


metaphysical,  and  that  the  sense  of  playing 
with  an  element  which  can  be  so  terrible  adds 
to  the  zest  of  the  spectacle.  And  then  fire  is 
not  the  least  degraded  by  it,  because  it  is  not 
utilized.  If  beauty  were  in  use,  the  factory 
would  add  a  grace  to  the  river,  and  we  should 
turn  from  the  fire- writing  on  the  wall  of 
heaven  to  look  at  a  message  printed  by  the 
magnetic  telegraph.  There  may  be  a  beauty 
in  the  use  itself ;  but  utilization  is  always 
downward,  and  it  is  this  feeling  that  makes 
Schiller's  Pegasus  in  yoke  so  universally  pleas- 
ing. So  long  as  the  curse  of  work  clings  to 
man,  he  wTill  see  beauty  only  in  play.  The 
capital  of  the  most  frugal  commonwealth  in 
the  world  burns  up  five  thousand  dollars  a 
year  in  gunpowder,  and  nobody  murmurs. 
Provident  Judas  wished  to  utilize  the  oint- 
ment, but  the  Teacher  would  rather  that  it 
should  be  wasted  in  poem. 

The  best  lesson  in  aesthetics  I  ever  got  (and, 
like  most  good  lessons,  it  fell  from  the  lips  of 
no  regular  professor)  was  from  an  Irishman 


OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC. 


303 


on  the  day  the  Nymph  Cochituate  was  for- 
mally introduced  to  the  people  of  Boston.  I 
made  one  with  other  rustics  in  the  streets, 
admiring  the  dignitaries  in  coaches  with  as 
much  Christian  charity  as  is  consistent  with 
an  elbow  in  the  pit  of  your  stomach  and  a  heel 
on  that  toe  which  is  your  only  inheritance  from 
two  excellent  grandfathers.  Among  other  al- 
legorical phenomena,  there  came  along  what 
I  should  have  called  a  hay-cart,  if  I  had  not 
known  it  was  a  triumphal  car,  filled  with  that 
fairest  variety  of  mortal  grass  which  with  us 
is  apt  to  spindle  so  soon  into  a  somewhat  sap- 
less womanhood.  Thirty-odd  young  maidens 
in  white  gowns,  with  blue  sashes  and  pink 
wreaths  of  French  crape,  represented  the 
United  States.  (How  shall  we  limit  our  num- 
ber, by  the  way,  if  ever  Utah  be  admitted  ?) 
The  ship,  the  printing-press,  even  the  wondrous 
train  of  express-wagons,  and  other  solid  bits 
of  civic  fantasy,  had  left  my  Hibernian  neigh- 
bor unmoved.  But  this  brought  him  down. 
Turning  to  me,  as  the  most  appreciative  pub- 


304 


A  FEW  BITS 


lie  for  the  moment,  with  face  of  as  much  de- 
light as  if  his  head  had  been  broken,  he  cried, 
"  Now  this  is  raly  beautiful !  Tothally  reg- 
yardless  uv  expinse  !  "  Methought  my  shirt- 
sleeved  lecturer  on  the  Beautiful  had  hit  at 
least  one  nail  full  on  the  head.  Voltaire  but 
epigrammatized  the  same  thought  when  he 
said,  Le  superflu^  chose  tres-necessaire. 

As  for  the  ceremonies  of  the  Church,  one 
need  not  waste  time  in  seeing  many  of  them. 
There  is  a  dreary  sameness  in  them,  and  one 
can  take  an  hour  here  and  an  hour  there,  as 
it  pleases  him,  just  as  sure  of  finding  the  same 
pattern  as  he  would  be  in  the  first  or  last  yard 
of  a  roll  of  printed  cotton.  For  myself,  I  do 
not  like  to  go  and  look  with  mere  curiosity  at 
what  is  sacred  and  solemn  to  others.  To  how 
many  these  Roman  shows  are  sacred,  I  cannot 
guess  ;  but  certainly  the  Romans  do  not  value 
them  much.  I  walked  out  to  the  grotto  of 
Egeria  on  Easter  Sunday,  that  I  might  not  be 
tempted  down  to  St.  Peter's  to  see  the  mock 


OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC.  305 

ery  of  Pio  Nono's  benediction.  It  is  certainly 
Christian,  for  he  blesses  them  that  curse  him, 
and  does  all  the  good  which  the  waving  of  his 
fingers  can  do  to  people  who  would  use  him 
despitefully  if  they  had  the  chance.  I  told  an 
Italian  servant  she  might  have  the  day ;  but 
she  said  she  did  not  care  for  it. 

"  But,"  urged  I,  "  will  you  not  go  to  receive 
the  blessing  of  the  Holy  Father?" 

"No,  sir." 

"  Do  you  not  wish  it  ?  " 

"  Not  in  the  least :  his  blessing  would  do  me 
no  good.  If  I  get  the  blessing  of  Heaven,  it 
will  serve  my  turn." 

There  were  three  families  of  foreigners  in 
our  house,  and  I  believe  none  of  the  Italian 
servants  went  to  St.  Peter's  that  day.  Yet 
they  commonly  speak  kindly  of  Pius.  I  have 
heard  the  same  phrase  from  several  Italians  of 
the  working-class.  "  He  is  a  good  man,"  they 
said,  "  but  ill-led." 

What  one  sees  in  the  streets  of  Rome  is 
worth  more  than  what  one  sees  in  the  churches. 


306 


A  FEW  BITS 


The  churches  themselves  are  generally  ugly. 
St.  Peter's  has  crushed  all  the  life  out  of  archi- 
tectural genius,  and  all  the  modern  churches 
look  as  if  they  were  swelling  themselves  in  imi- 
tation of  the  great  Basilica.  There  is  a  clumsy 
magnificence  about  them,  and  their  heaviness 
oppresses  you.  Their  marble  incrustations 
look  like  a  kind  of  architectural  elephan- 
tiasis, and  the  parts  are  puffy  with  a  dropsi- 
cal want  of  proportion.  There  is  none  of  the 
spring  and  soar  which  one  may  see  even  in 
the  Lombard  churches,  and  a  Roman  column 
standing  near  one  of  them,  slim  and  gentleman- 
like, satirizes  silently  their  tawdry  parvenuism. 
Attempts  at  mere  bigness  are  ridiculous  in  a 
city  where  the  Colosseum  still  yawns  in  crater- 
like ruin,  and  where  Michael  Angelo  made  a 
noble  church  out  of  a  single  room  in  Diocle- 
tian's baths. 

Shall  I  confess  it  ?  Michael  Angelo  seem»s 
to  me,  in  his  angry  reaction  against  sentimen- 
tal beauty,  to  have  mistaken  bulk  and  brawn 
for  the  antithesis  of  feebleness.     He  is  the 


OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC.  307 


apostle  of  the  exaggerated,  the  Victor  Hugo 
of  painting  and  sculpture.  I  have  a  feeling 
that  rivalry  was  a  more  powerful  motive  with 
him  than  love  of  art,  that  he  had  the  con- 
scious intention  to  be  original,  which  seldom 
leads  to  anything  better  than  being  extrava- 
gant. The  show  of  muscle  proves  strength, 
not  power ;  and  force  for  mere  force's  sake  in 
art  makes  one  think  of  Milo  caught  in  his  own 
log.  This  is  my  second  thought,  and  strikes 
me  as  perhaps  somewhat  niggardly  toward  one 
in  wrhom  you  cannot  help  feeling  there  was  so 
vast  a  possibility.  And  then  his  Eve,  his  Da- 
vid, his  Sibyls,  his  Prophets,  his  Sonnets  ! 
Well,  I  take  it  all  back,  and  come  round  to 
St.  Peter's  again  just  to  hint  that  I  doubt  about 
domes.  In  Rome  they  are  so  much  the  fash- 
ion that  I  felt  as  if  they  were  the  goitre  of 
architecture.  Generally  they  look  heavy. 
Those  on  St.  Mark's  in  Venice  are  the  only 
light  ones  I  ever  saw,  and  they  look  almost 
airy,  like  tents  puffed  out  with  wind.  I  sup- 
pose one  must  be  satisfied  with  the  interior 


308 


A  FEW  BITS 


effect,  which  is  certainly  noble  in  St.  Peter's. 
But  for  impressiveness  both  within  and  with- 
out there  is  nothing  like  a  Gothic  cathedral  for 
me,  nothing  that  crowns  a  city  so  nobly,  or 
makes  such  an  island  of  twilight  silence  in  the 
midst  of  its  noonday  clamors. 

Now  as  to  what  one  sees  in  the  streets,  the 
beggars  are  certainly  the  first  things  that  draw 
the  eye.  Beggary  is  an  institution  here.  The 
Church  has  sanctified  it  by  the  establishment 
of  mendicant  orders,  and  indeed  it  is  the  nat- 
ural result  of  a  social  system  where  the  non- 
producing  class  makes  not  only  the  laws,  but 
the  ideas.  The  beggars  of  Rome  go  far  toward 
proving  the  diversity  of  origin  in  mankind,  for 
on  them  surely  the  curse  of  Adam  never  fell. 
It  is  easier  to  fancy  that  Adam  Vaurien,  the 
first  tenant  of  the  Fool's  Paradise,  after  suck- 
ing his  thumbs  for  a  thousand  years,  took  to 
wife  Eve  Faniente,  and  became  the  progenitor 
of  this  race,  to  whom  also  he  left  a  calendar 
in  which  three  hundred  and  sixty-five  days  in 
the  year  were  made  feasts,  sacred  from  all 


OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC.  309 


secular  labor.  Accordingly,  they  not  merely 
do  nothing,  but  they  do  it  assiduously  and  al- 
most with  religious  fervor.  I  have  seen  an- 
cient members  of  this  sect  as  constant  at  their 
accustomed  street-corner  as  the  bit  of  broken 
column  on  which  they  sat ;  and  when  a  man 
does  this  in  rainy  weather,  as  rainy  weather 
is  in  Rome,  he  has  the  spirit  of  a  fanatic  and 
martyr. 

It  is  not  that  the  Italians  are  a  lazy  people. 
On  the  contrary,  I  am  satisfied  that  they  are  in- 
dustrious so  far  as  they  are  allowed  to  be.  But, 
as  I  said  before,  when  a  Roman  does  nothing, 
he  does  it  in  the  high  Roman  fashion.  A  friend 
of  mine  was  having  one  of  his  rooms  arranged 
for  a  private  theatre,  and  sent  for  a  person  who 
was  said  to  be  an  expert  in  the  business  to  do 
it  for  him.  After  a  day's  trial,  he  was  satisfied 
that  his  lieutenant  was  rather  a  hinderance 
than  a  help,  and  resolved  to  dismiss  him. 

"  What  is  your  charge  for  your  day's  ser- 
vices ?  " 

"  Two  scudi,  sir." 


310 


A  FEW  BITS 


"  Two  scudi !  Five  pauls  would  be  too 
much.  You  have  done  nothing  but  stand  with 
your  hands  in  your  pockets  and  get  in  the 
way  of  other  people." 

"  Lordship  is  perfectly  right ;  but  that  is 
my  way  of  working." 

It  is  impossible  for  a  stranger  to  say  who 
may  not  beg  in  Rome.  It  seems  to  be  a  sud- 
den madness  that  may  seize  any  one  at  the 
sight  of  a  foreigner.  You  see  a  very  re- 
spectable-looking person  in  the  street,  and  it 
is  odds  but,  as  you  pass  him,  his  hat  comes 
off,  his  whole  figure  suddenly  dilapidates  itself, 
assuming  a  tremble  of  professional  weakness, 
and  you  hear  the  everlasting  qualche  cosa  per 
earitd!  You  are  in  doubt  whether  to  drop  a 
bajoccho  into  the  next  cardinal's  hat  which 
offers  you  its  sacred  cavity  in  answer  to  your 
salute.  You  begin  to  believe  that  the  hat  was 
invented  for  the  sole  purpose  of  ingulfing  cop- 
pers, and  that  its  highest  type  is  the  great 
Triregno  itself,  into  which  the  pence  of  Peter 
rattle. 


OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC.  311 

But  you  soon  learn  to  distinguish  the  estab- 
lished beggars,  and  to  the  three  professions 
elsewhere  considered  liberal  you  add  a  fourth 
for  this  latitude,  —  mendicancy.  Its  professors 
look  upon  themselves  as  a  kind  of  guild  which 
ought  to  be  protected  by  the  government.  1 
fell  into  talk  with  a  woman  who  begged  of  me 
in  the  Colosseum.  Among  other  things  she 
complained  that  the  government  did  not  at  all 
consider  the  poor. 

"  Where  is  the  government  that  does  ?  "  I 
said. 

"Eh  gid  !  Excellency ;  but  this  government 
lets  beggars  from  the  country  come  into  Rome, 
which  is  a  great  injury  to  the  trade  of  us  born 
Romans.  There  is  Beppo,  for  example  ;  he 
is  a  man  of  property  in  his  own  town,  and  has 
a  dinner  of  three  courses  every  day.  He  has 
portioned  two  daughters  with  three  thousand 
scudi  each,  and  left  Rome  during  the  time  of 
the  Republic  with  the  rest  of  the  nobility.' ' 

At  first,  one  is  shocked  and  pained  at  the 
exhibition  of  deformities  in  the  street  But 


312 


A  FEW  BITS 


by  and  by  he  comes  to  look  upon  them  with 
little  more  emotion  than  is  excited  by  seeing 
the  tools  of  any  other  trade.  The  melancholy 
of  the  beggars  is  purely  a  matter  of  business  ; 
and  they  look  upon  their  maims  as  Fortunatus 
purses,  which  will  always  give  them  money. 
A  withered  arm  they  present  to  you  as  a  high- 
wayman would  his  pistol ;  a  goitre  is  a  life- 
annuity  ;  a  St.  Vitus  dance  is  as  good  as  an 
engagement  as  prima  ballerina  at  the  Apollo  ; 
and  to  have  no  legs  at  all  is  to  stand  on  the 
best  footing  with  fortune.  They  are  a  merry 
race,  on  the  whole,  and  quick-witted,  like  the 
rest  of  their  countrymen.  I  believe  the  regu- 
lar fee  for  a  beggar  is  a  quattrino,  about  a 
quarter  of  a  cent ;  but  they  expect  more  of 
foreigners.  A  friend  of  mine  once  gave  one 
of  these  tiny  coins  to  an  old  woman  ;  she  deli- 
cately expressed  her  resentment  by  exclaim- 
ing, "  Thanks,  signoria.  God  will  reward 
even  you !  " 

A  begging  friar  came  to  me  one  day  with  a 
subscription  for  repairing  his  convent.  "Ah, 


OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC. 


313 


but  I  am  a  heretic,"  said  I.  "  Undoubtedly," 
with  a  shrug,  implying  a  respectful  acknowl- 
edgment of  a  foreigner's  right  to  choose  warm 
and  dry  lodgings  in  the  other  world  as  well 
as  in  this,  "  but  your  money  is  perfectly  or- 
thodox." 

Another  favorite  wTay  of  doing  nothing  is 
to  excavate  the  Forum.  I  think  the  JFanien- 
tes  like  this  all  the  better,  because  it  seems  a 
kind  of  satire  upon  work,  as  the  witches  par- 
ody the  Christian  offices  of  devotion  at  their 
Sabbath.  A  score  or  so  of  old  men  in  volu- 
minous cloaks  shift  the  earth  from  one  side  of 
a  large  pit  to  the  other,  in  a  manner  so  lei- 
surely that  it  is  positive  repose  to  look  at  them. 
The  most  bigoted  anti-Fourierist  might  ac- 
knowledge this  to  be  attractive  industry. 

One  conscript  father  trails  a  small  barrow 
up  to  another,  who  stands  leaning  on  a  long 
spade.  Arriving,  he  fumbles  for  his  snuff- 
box, and  offers  it  deliberately  to  his  friend. 
Each  takes  an  ample  pinch,  and  both  seat 
themselves  to  await  the  result.    If  one  should 

14 


314 


A  FEW  BITS 


sneeze,  he  receives  the  Felieitd  !  of  the  other ; 
and,  after  allowing  the  titillation  to  subside,  he 
replies,  Crrazia  !  Then  follows  a  little  conver- 
sation, and  then  they  prepare  to  load.  But  it 
occurs  to  the  barrow-driver  that  this  is  a  good 
opportunity  to  fill  and  light  his  pipe ;  and  to 
do  so  conveniently  he  needs  his  barrow  to  sit 
upon.  He  draws  a  few  whiffs,  and  a  little 
more  conversation  takes  place.  The  barrow 
is  now  ready  ;  but  first  the  wielder  of  the 
spade  will  fill  his  pipe  also.  This  done,  more 
whiffs  and  more  conversation.  Then  a  spoon- 
ful of  earth  is  thrown  into  the  barrow,  and  it 
starts  on  its  return.  But  midway  it  meets  an 
empty  barrow,  and  both  stop  to  go  through 
the  snuff-box  ceremonial  once  more,  and  to 
discuss  whatever  new  thing  has  occurred  in 
the  excavation  since  their  last  encounter. 
And  so  it  goes  on  all  day. 

As  I  see  more  of  material  antiquity,  I  be- 
gin to  suspect  that  my  interest  in  it  is  most- 
y  factitious.     The  relations  of  races  to  the 


OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC.  315 


physical  world  (only  to  be  studied  fruitfully 
on  the  spot)  do  not  excite  in  me  an  interest 
at  all  proportionate  to  that  I  feel  in  their  in- 
fluence on  the  moral  advance  of  mankind, 
which  one  may  as  easily  trace  in  his  own  li- 
brary as  on  the  spot.  The  only  useful  remark 
I  remember  to  have  made  here  is,  that,  the  sit- 
uation of  Rome  being  far  less  strong  than  that 
of  any  city  of  the  Etruscan  league,  it  must 
have  been  built  where  it  is  for  purposes  of 
commerce.  It  is  the  most  defensible  point 
near  the  mouth  of  the  Tiber.  It  is  only  as 
rival  trades-folk  that  Rome  and  Carthage  had 
any  comprehensible  cause  of  quarrel.  It  is 
only  as  a  commercial  people  that  we  can  un- 
derstand the  early  tendency  of  the  Romans 
towards  democracy.  As  for  antiquity,  after 
reading  history,  one  is  haunted  by  a  discom- 
forting suspicion  that  the  names  so  painfully 
deciphered  in  hieroglyphic  or  arrow-head  in- 
scriptions are  only  so  many  more  Smiths  and 
Browns  masking  it  in  unknown  tongues. 
Moreover,  if  we  Yankees  are  twitted  with  not 


316 


A  FEW  BITS 


knowing  the  difference  between  big  and  great, 
may  not  those  of  us  who  have  learned  it  turn 
round  on  many  a  monument  over  here  with 
the  same  reproach  ?  I  confess  I  am  begin- 
ning to  sympathize  with  a  countryman  of  ours 
from  Michigan,  who  asked  our  Minister  to  di- 
rect him  to  a  specimen  ruin  and  a  specimen 
gallery,  that  he  might  see  and  be  rid  of  them 
once  for  all.  I  saw  three  young  Englishmen 
going  through  the  Vatican  by  catalogue  and 
number,  the  other  day,  in  a  fashion  which  John 
Bull  is  apt  to  consider  exclusively  American. 
"  Number  300  !  "  says  the  one  with  catalogue 
and  pencil,  "  have  you  seen  it  ?  "  "  Yes," 
answer  his  two  comrades,  and,  checking  it  off, 
he  goes  on  with  Number  301.  Having  wit- 
nessed the  unavailing  agonies  of  many  Anglo- 
Saxons  from  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic  in  their 
effort  to  have  the  correct  sensation  before 
many  hideous  examples  of  antique  bad  taste, 
my  heart  warmed  toward  my  business-like 
British  cousins,  who  were  doing  their  aesthetics 
in  this  thrifty  auctioneer  fashion.    Our  cart- 


OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC.  317 


before-horse  education,  which  makes  us  more 
familiar  with  the  history  and  literature  of 
Greeks  and  Romans  than  with  those  of  our 
own  ancestry,  (though  there  is  nothing  in  an- 
cient art  to  match  Shakespeare  or  a  Gothic 
minster,)  makes  us  the  gulls  of  what  we  call 
classical  antiquity.  In  sculpture,  to  be  sure, 
they  have  us  on  the  hip.  Europe  were  worth 
visiting,  if  only  to  be  rid  of  this  one  old  man 
of  the  sea. 

I  am  not  ashamed  to  confess  a  singular  sym- 
pathy with  what  are  known  as  the  Middle 
Ages.  I  cannot  help  thinking  that  few  pe- 
riods have  left  behind  them  such  traces  of 
inventiveness  and  power.  Nothing  is  more 
tiresome  than  the  sameness  of  modern  cities  ; 
and  it  has  often  struck  me  that  this  must  also 
have  been  true  of  those  ancient  ones  in  which 
Greek  architecture  or  its  derivatives  pre- 
vailed, —  true  at  least  as  respects  public  build- 
ings. But  mediseval  towns,  especially  in  Ita- 
ly, even  when  only  fifty  miles  asunder,  have 
an  individuality  of  character  as  marked  as  that 


318 


A  FEW  BITS 


of  trees.  Nor  is  it  merely  this  originality  that 
attracts  me,  but  likewise  the  sense  that,  how- 
ever old,  they  are  nearer  to  me  in  being  mod- 
ern and  Christian.  I  find  it  harder  to  bridge 
over  the  gulf  of  Paganism  than  of  centuries. 
Apart  from  any  difference  in  the  men,  I  had 
a  far  deeper  emotion  when  I  stood  on  the  Sas- 
so  di  Dante,  than  at  Horace's  Sabine  farm  or 
by  the  tomb  of  Virgil.  The  latter,  indeed,  in- 
terested me  chiefly  by  its  association  with  com- 
paratively modern  legend ;  and  one  of  the 
buildings  I  am  most  glad  to  have  seen  in  Rome 
is  the  Bear  Inn,  where  Montaigne  lodged  on 
his  arrival. 

I  think  it  must  have  been  for  some  such 
reason  that  I  liked  my  Florentine  better  than 
my  Roman  walks,  though  I  am  vastly  more 
contented  with  merely  being  in  Rome.  Flor- 
ence is  more  noisy ;  indeed,  I  think  it  the 
noisiest  town  I  was  ever  in.  What  with  the 
continual  jangling  of  its  bells,  the  rattle  of 
Austrian  drums,  and  the  street-cries,  Ancora 
mi  raccapriccia.     The  Italians  are  a  vocifer- 


OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC.  319 

ous  people,  and  most  so  among  them  the  Flor- 
entines. Walking  through  a  back  street  one 
day,  I  saw  an  old  woman  higgling  with  a  peri- 
patetic dealer,  who,  at  every  interval  afforded 
him  by  the  remarks  of  his  veteran  antagonist, 
would  tip  his  head  on  one  side,  and  shout,  with 
a  kind  of  wondering  enthusiasm,  as  if  he  could 
hardly  trust  the  evidence  of  his  own  senses 
to  such  loveliness,  0,  che  bellezza!  che  belle-e- 
ezza  !  The  two  had  been  contending  as  obsti- 
nately as  the  Greeks  and  Trojans  over  the  body 
of  Patroclus,  and  I  was  curious  to  know  what 
was  the  object  of  so  much  desire  on  the  one 
side  and  admiration  on  the  other.  It  was  a 
half-dozen  of  weazeny  baked  pears,  beggarly 
remnant  of  the  day's  traffic.  Another  time 
I  stopped  before  a  stall,  debating  whether  to 
buy  some  fine-looking  peaches.  Before  I  had 
made  up  my  mind,  the  vender,  a  stout  fellow, 
with  a  voice  like  a  prize-bull  of  Bashan,  opened 
a  mouth  round  and  large  as  the  muzzle  of  a 
blunderbuss,  and  let  fly  into  my  ear  the  follow- 
ing pertinent  observation:  "Belle  pesche!  belle 


320 


A  FEW  BITS 


pe-e-esche!"  (crescendo.^)  I  stared  at  him  in 
stunned  bewilderment ;  but,  seeing  that  he  had 
reloaded  and  was  about  to  fire  again,  took  to 
my  heels,  the  exploded  syllables  rattling  after 
me  like  so  many  buckshot.  A  single  turnip 
is  argument  enough  with  them  till  midnight ; 
nay,  I  have  heard  a  ruffian  yelling  over  a  cov- 
ered basket,  which,  I  am  convinced,  was  emp- 
ty, and  only  carried  as  an  excuse  for  his  stu- 
pendous vocalism.  It  never  struck  me  before 
what  a  quiet  people  Americans  are. 

Of  the  pleasant  places  within  easy  walk  of 
Rome,  I  prefer  the  garden  of  the  Villa  Albani, 
as  being  most  Italian.  One  does  not  go  to 
Italy  for  examples  of  Price  on  the  Picturesque. 
Compared  with  landscape-gardening,  it  is  Ra- 
cine to  Shakespeare,  I  grant ;  but  it  has  its 
own  charm,  nevertheless.  I  like  the  balus- 
traded  terraces,  the  sun-proof  laurel  walks,  the 
vases  and  statues.  It  is  only  in  such  a  cli- 
mate that  it  does  not  seem  inhuman  to  thrust 
a  naked  statue  out  of  doors.  Not  to  speak  of 
their  incongruity,  how  dreary  do  those  white 


OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC.  321 

figures  look  at  Fountains  Abbey  in  that  shrewd 
Yorkshire  atmosphere !  To  put  them  there 
shows  the  same  bad  taste  that  led  Prince  Po- 
lonia,  as  Thackeray  calls  him,  to  build  an  arti- 
ficial ruin  within  a  mile  of  Rome.  But  I  doubt 
if  the  Italian  garden  will  bear  transplantation. 
Farther  north,  or  under  a  less  constant  sun- 
shine, it  is  but  half-hardy  at  the  best.  Within 
the  city,  the  garden  of  the  French  Academy  is 
my  favorite  retreat,  because  little  frequented ; 
and  there  is  an  arbor  there  in  which  I  have 
read  comfortably  (sitting  where  the  sun  could 
reach  me)  in  January.  By  the  wray,  there 
is  something  very  agreeable  in  the  way  these 
people  have  of  making  a  kind  of  fireside  of  the 
sunshine.  With  us  it  is  either  too  hot  or  too 
cool,  or  we  are  too  busy.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  they  have  no  such  thing  as  a  chimney- 
corner. 

Of  course  I  haunt  the  collections  of  art 
faithfully  ;  but  my  favorite  gallery,  after  all, 
is  the  street.  There  I  always  find  something 
entertaining,  at  least.    The  other  day,  on  my 

14*  U 


322  A  FEW  BITS 

way  to  the  Colonna  Palace,  I  passed  the  Foun- 
tain of  Trevi,  from  which  the  water  is  now 
shut  off  on  account  of  repairs  to  the  aqueduct. 
A  scanty  rill  of  soap-sudsy  water  still  trickled 
from  one  of  the  conduits,  and,  seeing  a  crowd, 
I  stopped  to  find  out  what  nothing  or  other 
had  gathered  it.  One  charm  of  Rome  is  that 
nobody  has  anything  in  particular  to  do,  or,  if 
he  has,  can  always  stop  doing  it  on  the  slight- 
est pretext.  I  found  that  some  eels  had  been 
discovered,  and  a  very  vivacious  hunt  was  go- 
ing on,  the  chief  Nimrods  being  boys.  I  hap- 
pened to  be  the  first  to  see  a  huge  eel  wrig- 
gling from  the  mouth  of  a  pipe,  and  pointed 
him  out.  Two  lads  at  once  rushed  upon  him. 
One  essayed  the  capture  with  his  naked  hands, 
the  other,  more  provident,  had  armed  himself 
with  a  rag  of  woollen  cloth  with  which  to 
maintain  his  grip  more  securely.  Hardly  had 
this  latter  arrested  his  slippery  prize,  when 
a  ragged  rascal,  watching  his  opportunity, 
snatched  away  the  prize,  and  instantly  secured 
it  by  thrusting  the  head  into  his  mouth,  and 


OF  ROMAN  MOSAIC.  823 

closing  on  it  a  set  of  teeth  like  an  ivory  vice. 
But  alas  for  ill-got  gain  !    Rob  Roy's 

"  Good  old  plan, 
That  he  should  take  who  has  the  power, 
And  he  should  keep  who  can," 

did  not  serve  here.  There  is  scarce  a  square 
rood  in  Rome  without  one  or  more  stately 
cocked  hats  in  it,  emblems  of  authority  and 
police.  I  saw  the  flash  of  the  snow-white 
cross-belts,  gleaming  through  that  dingy  crowd 
like  the  panache  of  Henri  Quatre  at  Ivry,  I 
saw  the  mad  plunge  of  the  canvas-shielded 
head-piece,  sacred  and  terrible  as  that  of  Gess- 
ler;  and  while  the  greedy  throng  were  dan- 
cing about  the  anguilliceps,  each  taking  his 
chance  twitch  at  the  undulating  object  of  all 
wishes,  the  captor  dodging  his  head  hither  and 
thither,  (vulnerable,  like  Achilles,  only  in  his 
'eel,  as  a  British  tourist  would  say,)  a  pair  of 
broad  blue  shoulders  parted  the  assailants  as  a 
ship's  bows  part  a  wave,  a  pair  of  blue  arms, 
terminating  in  gloves  of  Berlin  thread,  were 
stretched  forth,  not  in  benediction,  one  hand 


324 


ROMAN  MOSAIC. 


grasped  the  slippery  Briseis  by  the  waist,  the 
other  bestowed  a  cuff  on  the  jaw-bone  of 
Achilles,  which  loosened  (rather  by  its  author- 
ity than  its  physical  force)  the  hitherto  refrac- 
tory incisors,  a  snuffy  bandanna  was  produced, 
the  prisoner  was  deposited  in  this  temporary 
watch-house,  and  the  cocked  hat  sailed  majes- 
tically away  with  the  property  thus  seques- 
tered for  the  benefit  of  the  state. 

"  Gaudeant  anguillae  si  mortuus  sit  homo  ille, 
Qui,  quasi  morte  reas,  excruciabat  eas  ! M 

If  you  have  got  through  that  last  sentence 
without  stopping  for  breath,  you  are  fit  to  be- 
gin on  the  Homer  of  Chapman,  who,  both  as 
translator  and  author,  has  the  longest  wind, 
(especially  for  a  comparison,)  without  being 
long-winded,  of  all  writers  I  know  anything 
of,  not  excepting  Jeremy  Taylor, 


